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Price, 50 Cents. 



Southern 
Letters. 



Noble L. Prentis. 

1881. 



Southern Letters. 



NOBLE L. PRENTIS, 

OF THE ATCHISON CHAMPION. 



TOPEKA, KANSAS: 

GEO. W. MARTIN, KANSAS PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

1881. 






Copyrighted, 1881, by Noble L. Pkentis. 






^^./ 



PREFACE. 



The letters here collected were written for the Atchison 
Daily Champion in April and May of 1881. 

The instructions received by the writer as the represent- 

tive of the Champion were to describe the condition of 

the South exactly as he found it. It is believed that 

these letters bear in themselves the evidence of an honest 

effort to carry out these instructions. 

It should be borne in mind that the South, as far as 
visited and described, is the South of to-day, not the South 
of five or ten years ago; and it should also be remem- 
bered that the "bull-dozed" States, with the exception of 
South Carolina, were not visited. The writer has not un- 
dertaken to express opinions where he has had no oppor- 
tunity for observation. 

Certainly nothing here is "set down in malice." The 
South is here recognized as a part of our common country, 
to the peace and prosperity of which no good citizen of 
any section can remain indifferent. 

The letters appear substantially as published in the 
Champion, and the critical may object that the collection 
savors more of the haste of the newspaper writer than the 
care of the book-maker; but, such as they are, the letters 
are submitted to the patient indulgence of the readers of 
Kansas, which has never failed the writer in lo! these many 
years. N. L. P. 

Atchison, May 26, 1881. 



LETTERS. 

an-! " ^^, 

After Many Years '. 5 

The Heart of Kentucky 12 

The Mammoth Cave i...... 20 

"Tenting on the Old Camp Ground". ...... .„..:.... 31 

A Black University i-^.?..Z.'. 38 

In and Around Nashville .^ 44 

The Old War Trail 52 

In and Around Chattanooga : 58 

The Mountain Capital 68 

Concerning Tennessee 74 

Kenesaw ..«>.. 80 

The Gate City ....:.C..^ 88 

High Georgia 98 

Down to the Sea 108 

A Swing Around 115 

A Drowsy Capital 124 

South Carolina Politics , 136 

In North Carolina 142 

Some Hours in Kichmond., , 147 

Conclusions 157 



SOUTHERN LETTERS. 



AFTER MANY YEARS. 

Louisville, Ky., April 10, 1881. 

It was here at Louisville, in the hot July days of 1865, that 
my regiment, the poor old much-marched and little-glorified 
"Sixteenth," ended "officially" its connection with the volunteer 
army of the United States. Here the men learned that their 
term of enlistment was over, here they signed the last muster roll, 
and a few days later at Springfield, Illinois, they received their 
last pay, and dispersed to their homes, no more to rally at the 
sound of the drum. 

What a long tramp it had been since those pleasant, soul-stir- 
ring days in May 1861, when, under the budding trees and the 
gleaming blue of the sky, full of hope and eagerness to meet any 
foe at any odds ; fearful, almost, that the Rebellion would be over 
before it could try its hand, the young regiment had sworn 
with uplifted hands to bear true faith and allegiance to the United 
States of America. Many of the men lived to see the last day 
of a term of four years and two months expire, and one of them 
was the writer of this chronicle. The story of this regiment was, 
compared with that of many other commands, an uneventful one. 
It fired, in an obscure skirmish in Missouri, some of the first shots 
of the war; it fired its last volley at Bentonville, North Carolina, 
the last pitched battle of the long struggle. But between those 
events it took part in none of the great historic conflicts. 
It was its fate to be within hearing of Stone river and Chica- 
mauga, and the great battles about Atlanta, and yet not to be in 
at the harvest of death. Yet what a long round was that which 



•6 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

ended at Louisville ! All over the prairies and woods of North 
Missouri; among the swamps around New Madrid; down th^ 
swollen Mississippi to Osceola, Arkansas ; in the flash-in-the-pan 
movement on Fort Pillow; up the river to the God-forsaken wil- 
derness around Corinth, where dunderpated old Halleck made 
" reconnoissanee in force;" then to Tuscumbia; then to Athens, 
and on the great Buell-Bragg "swing-around" to Nashville, to 
be there blockaded ; then to the South again, to hear the guns at 
Mission Ridge and Lookout; then on the long march to the sea 
with Sherman; then to Washington and the great review, and 
then to Louisville, Springfield, and home. 

Never in a great battle, seldom mentioned in the dispatches, 
never gilded by any chance rays of glory — never uttering that 
word; never the "pet" regiment of any city, county or State, 
though one of the first in the field; ignored by Sanitary Commis- 
sion, Christian Commission, and even by the home sewing socie- 
ties, the regiment yet did its duty. How many miles it marched, 
going into every Confederate State except Florida, Louisiana and 
Texas; how many miles of corduroy it laid; how many boxes of 
hard-tack it "packed" at Kelly's Ferry; how many lines of 
breastworks it threw up in the Atlanta campaign; — and all this 
time how many men it furnished for every arm of the service. 
They commenced detailing at the first of the war, and they never 
got through till the war was done — men for the artillery, n^en for 
the gunboats, for the pioneers, even for the irregular cavalry, and 
officers for batteries and for other regiments, white and colored. 
It seemed that a full regiment must have graduated from its ranks. 
Never slaughtered in great battles, it yet left its dead all along 
its winding path from the Missouri to Savannah, and north and 
west again until they came to Louisville, as soldiers to "die no 
more." How well I remember the last muster rolls — how they 
worked all the hot July night at them, and yet there was not 
much excitement about it. Everything had become a matter of 
course; the regiment, collectively, had become as stolid as an 
overworked mule. The men seemed to mind little more about 
being mustered out than again hearing little Captain Rowe rush- 
ing about Company C's quarters at four o'clock in the morning, 



AFTER MANY YEAKS. 7 

ordering them to get up and get ready to march immediately 
with four days' rations. They marched to the Louisville ferry as 
if they were going South instead of North. 

" Home." How many times every man in that regiment had 
uttered that word in every accent ! One would have thought 
some little town or farm-house in Illinois was heaven itself, to 
hear them speak of it. How they talked about the girls there 
— but they were not girls then — they were "angels ever bright 
and fair." How they talked about the commonest articles of 
food which they were going to eat when they got "home." It 
was "home" in every heart and on every tongue for four years, 
r.ud now to those of us who had no wives or babies to go home 
to — and the married were in the minority in the regiment — it 
was not what we expected — this going "home." 

The day came, each man took his discharge, the parchment with 
the spread eagle at the top; some bought their muskets and 
" traps" of the Government. One morning the sergeants called 
the roll; the next morning there were no sergeants; no "orderly 
books," no men — the regiment had gone "home." 

There was a noticeable difference between 1861 and 1865, be- 
tween the going and coming volunteer. No fluttering handker- 
chiefs greeted the return of our regiment, no cannon shouted, no 
committees of invitation or reception met the veterans at the 
depots. The land was full of discharged soldiers then. By ones 
and twos and threes the disbanded scattered about the country, 
I remember that when I parted with some of them, they sang 
out, " Send us your newspaper, old fellow. " With their pro- 
phetic eyes they saw my future doom. 

And so the regiment went "home." I say "home," but while 
some were met with clasping arms and the joyful clamor of greet- 
ing voices, many more wandered about for a time in unutterable 
loneliness. The "cock's shrill clarion" heard across the country 
in the gray of morn sounded melancholy enough to ears accus- 
tomed for years to the reveille. The struggle for work, for bread, 
came hard enough ; for many it has been hard enough ever since ; 
and when once-in-awhile I meet one of the old regiment, some- 
thing in the sunken lines of his face, in his whitening hair, in the 



8 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

stoop of his shoulders, tells me that the years of peace have 
broken hira more than all the marches and vigils of the war, 

I have written thus because all these reflections have come 
since I came here to Louisville, and because I have never in my 
reading seen what seemed to me a true picture of the "soldier's 
return." 

Louisville, in the sixteen years that have rolled by since I saw 
it last, has changed for the better, as it should. It was full of 
all sorts of human refuse in 1865, and was villainously dirty. 
The heart of the city has been finely built up, though the style 
of business architecture is rather sombre There is nothing to 
remind you that you are in the South, and but little to remind 
you that you are in Kentucky, except the frequent recurrence of 
the sign, "Kentucky Whiskies." I had hitherto supposed that 
old Bourbon, like virtue, was its own reward ; but it appears 
that a premium is required here to get people to drink it. I 
saw a sign at one ruin factory, "An oyster with each drink," 
while ajpother enterprising vendor offered the temptation of " an 
oyster and a hard-boiled egg" with each drink — thus insuring 
the sufierer a lively turn of nightmare, even if he escaped the 
jim-jams. 

The season I found no further advanced than at Atchison. 
There was an hour, however, on Sunday morning, when it was 
spring. It was just as the church bells were ringing and the 
town clocks were striking; and the scene was on that fine street, 
Broadway. A burst of yellow sunshine lit the wide street, the 
stately houses framed in green grass-plots, and glorified the 
throngs of gaily-dressed ladies and children on their way to the 
churches. It seemed as if the dark limbed trees would in an 
instant burst into leaf in honor of Palm Sunday, which festival 
it was. But the gleam was transient, as most beautiful things 
are, and soon the sky grew gray and dull, and the cold which 
had been with us so long came back again. 

In the afternoon I visited Cave Hill, for many years the great 
cemetery of Louisville. It is divided into two parts, an old- 
time "graveyard" and a modern cemetery. The latter derives 



AFTER MANY YEARS. y 

its beavny from the inequality of its surface, beiug broken often 
by circular, bowl-like depressions ; all is in the brightest sod, 
and no ornamentation has been attempted except in the con- 
struction of a drive and in the planting of most magnificent 
evergreens. At the extreme end of the grounds farthest from 
the entrance is the National cemetery, where nearly four thou- 
sand soldiers are buried. The Union dead lie in long ranks on 
a hillside, row on row, as if they were formed in column to 
charge the crest. On the summit there is another detachment, 
while on the farthest slope, as if retiring, are the ranks of the 
Confederates, each grave marked with a neat head-stone. I no- 
ticed on one, " Elizabeth Temms, from Calhoun, Ga.," with the 
added lines, "Bury me with ray people;" and one Confederate 
soldier's grave had been made with his comrades as late as 1872. 
I doubt not such marks of attachment to the "lost cause" will 
continue in the South for years, as in Scotland the old Jacobites 
continued to drink the health of "him that's awa' " long after 
the cloud of irremediable ruin had settled upon the house of 
Stuart. 

I looked in vain for the monument of George D. Prentice. 
People I met were positive that such a monument existed, and 
gave directions as to its probable locality, but while I found the 
graves of his family, including his ill-fated son, Courtland, 
killed in the Confederate service, there was nothing to mark the 
resting-place of the man whose fame had made Louisville 
famous. I thought of his own pathetic lines on the lone, un- 
marked grave of a little child in the wilds of Arkansas. 

There was something strange in the surroundings of the place. 
Separated from it only by the fence, and a little grove, rise the 
gloomy, castellated walls of the workhouse. The prisoners look- 
ing through the grated windows see the peaceful slopes of " God's 
acre," and I thought how many a weary-hearted outcast, not yet 
lost to memory or to shame, must have gazed from the gloom of 
this prison-house, and thought how better the dreamless sleep of 
those resting thousands than life with a hopeless burden and an 
enduring stain. Near the entrance of the grounds I heard the 
continued and boisterous laughter of children at play, I found 



10 SOUTH ERX LETTERS. 

that it proceeded from the grounds of an orphanage near by. 
The little fatherless and motherless made the air ring with their 
shouts of glee, all unconscious of what their near neighbor, Death, 
had done to them. 

I had never visited any sort of school exclusively supported 
and conducted by colored people, and I gratified my curiosity, 
late in the afternoon, by a visit to the Normal and Theological 
Institute on Kentucky street, which is supported by the colored 
Baptist churches. The surroundings, as I found them, were not 
inviting. The building had once been a stylish family residence 
in the center of a large inclosure filled with trees and shrubbery, 
but it had been suffered to fall into decay ; the front gates were 
off their hinges, and the grounds looked disheveled and dirty. 
On entering the big, empty, dirty hall, I pursued my investiga- 
tions till I finally found myself seated in the chapel, where the 
boarding pupils, some thirty boys, girls, young men and young 
women, were at service. The room had been a double parlor at 
some time, and a handsome marble fireplace was still visible, but 
rough benches and blackboards had transformed it. The room 
was lighted with smoking kerosene lamps, the windows were thick 
with dirt, and the establishment had a black look all around. The 
principal of the school, a smart, portly, wordy yellow person, 
with a moustache like John A. Logan's, delivered an energetic 
exposition of the story of the widow and her two mites. The 
duty exemplified, was, of course, that of giving — in worldly par- 
lance, " whacking up ; " and I have yet to attend a colored religious 
service where the contribution did not seem the most important 
feature. The congregation was sleepy and listless, until a hymn 
was given out, and then you heard it. Such voices, though all 
untrained, you would not find in one white congregation in twenty. 
A prayer by a young student, which seemed to me full of rever- 
ence, closed the exercises. 

I had some talk with the principal, who, though a man of edu- 
cation, did not please me. He wore a dressing gown, and 
seemed bumptious. I had, however, another talk with a Mr. 
Marrs, a man of unmixed blood, a school teacher by profession, 
which was more satisfactory. I forgot about the dirt and the 



AFTER MANY YEARS. 11 

dressing gown and the grotesqueness of the surroundings, in 
hearing how these poor people had shouldered a debt of thirteen 
thousand dollars in buying the building; how they had kept up 
the running expenses of the school without encroaching on what 
they had "laid down" for the payment of the property; how 
they had organized a band of "jubilee singers" to lift at the 
wheel, and so on. I could not learn that the white people had 
done much for the school, but Mr. Marrs acknowledged their 
help in other matters, and spoke especially of the efforts of Rev. 
Dr. Stuart Robinson, of Louisville, in behalf of the colored or- 
phan asylum. Dr. Robinson I had always regarded as the high 
priest of Bourbonism, but, like many another good man, his 
practice is better than his theories. 

The lamps were shining in the streets when I took my leave 
of Mr. Marrs in the dingy yard of the Normal and Theological 
Institute, and here I will take leave of Louisville. 



THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. 

Lexington, Ky., April 13, 1881. 

One of my earliest wishes in the direction of travel was to 
visit the Blue-Grass region of Kentucky, of which I heard so much 
from the tall young Kentuckians who were in my childhood my 
father's personal friends and political associates. I firmly be- 
lieved it, for a long time, the most densely populated portion of 
the United States, from hearing the oft-repeated assertion that 
nobody ever saw a Kentuckian who hailed from over forty miles 
from Lexington. Yet there was a time when to come even from 
the Blue-Grass region was not exactly the greatest thing, for the 
old-time emigrant, toiling along the roads of far Illinois, was 
prone to answer the universal question of a new country. "Where 
are you from?" with, "I am from Kaintucky, here, sir, but I was 
bawn in old Fudginny, sir." However, that was a long time ago. 
To be born, as man or horse, in the Biue-Grass country, is now 
deemed a patent of human and equine nobility. 

The "Short Line" from Louisville to Cincinnati takes you to 
Lexington, and though the road does not run all the way through 
a region of surpassing beauty or fertility, still you see the famous 
blue-grass pastures at intervals; and the " old Kentucky home," a 
white wilderness of porches and wings and outbuildings, includ- 
ing the old "quarters," is a frequent object in the landscape. 
Lumber enough must have been consumed in one of those old 
houses to build a business block in Kansas, and all the available 
brick in the neighborhood was consumed in the two big chimneys 
standing on the outside at either end of the big house. There 
are some pretty towns, like Eminence, La Grange and Midway, 
along the line, and plenty of straggling old burgs which nearly 
always stand a mile or so from the track, whether from antipathy 
to the railroad or because the railroad did not seek their society, 
could not be determined. 

(12) 



THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. 13 

There was no life or stir in the country. There are no manu- 
factories in these towns; they make one think of villages in rural 
England. I missed the hedges, common to England and Kansas. 
Everything here is plank and post. 

Near a station called Anchorage is one of the State asylums 
for the insane, and one of the inmates is Buford, who murdered, 
in cold blood, Judge Elliott. Buford agrees with the rest of 
mankind in believing that he is not insane, and was not when 
he committed the crime. He merely killed one of the judges 
because the decisions of the court generally had been against him. 
I got into conversation with a citizen of Owen county, where 
Buford was tried. He said the jury was a miserable one ; that 
five out of the twelve could not read, and the majority had never 
been as far from home as Owenton before; that they were tired 
out with legal arguments of the meaning of which they had not 
the slightest comprehension, and determined to bring in a verdict 
at once. The man from Owen was an interesting character, not 
in any way allied to the aristocracy of the blue-grass country. 
He was born in Owen ; had served his time in a Kentucky Con- 
federate cavalry regiment, and was a very practical person. He 
said Owen had a bad name ; that it made considerable whisky, 
which was entirely consumed at home ; that in his district he, 
with others, had had a hard fight to get a free school established, 
and he expressed great disgust, (in which I fully shared,) that one 
of the opponents to the school tax was a man from Michigan. 
The negroes, he said, could get a fair living in his county, but 
out of the five or six hundred in the county, there were only two 
whom he knew to be land-owners. He thought they did surpris- 
ingly well in the way of education. They had a school in his 
neighborhood ; he did not know exactly how it was supported, 
but it was kept up, and the children appeared to learn fast. He 
said the black folks were very timid ; that they were afraid to 
come into Owen from outside. In short, I judged from his sketch 
that Owen was not the richest producing portion of the moral 
vineyard. Later, he qualified his first evidence somewhat, and 
said that the "pikes" through the county were kept in order, and 
that the people were hospitable to the last degree. He invited 



14 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

me, iu parting, to come and see him, and said lie would take me 
to Oweuton on a " county court day," when, if the weather was 
suitable, and the whisky operated with its usual suddenness and 
power, I would see what Gen. Phil. Kearney was accustomed to 
call "lovely fighting along the whole line." 

As far as situation goes, Frankfort is certainly remarkable. 
Crowded in between the high cliffs and bluffs of the Kentucky 
river, it made me think of a miniature copy of Basle on the 
Rhine, in Switzerland. The Kentucky river is a swift, shallow, 
rolling stream, but is still dear to Congress, which makes appro- 
priations to lock and dam it. At certain stages of the water it 
is used by raftsmen, and Frankfort is quite a native lumber 
market in consequence. A queer, old-world sort of place is 
Frankfort. I should think it ought to be left in peace, but I 
am told that there is a chronic desire to remove the capital to 
Louisville or Lexington, which probably irritates the burghers 
of Frankfort. I am a Frankfort man, myself. 1 do not think 
a place that is good for anything else should be a State capital. 

Arriving at Lexington after dark, I put up, on the recom- 
mendation of my friend from Owen county, at the Southern Ho- 
tel, which establishment was commanded by his former Colonel. I 
found the Southern a fine specimen of the wandering, confused, 
tumble-down, dark, smoky old tavern, where the colored servants, 
like the people before Noah's flood, do what seems right iu their 
own eyes, and do as little of anything as possible. Mine host 
the Colonel was a very dark, spare, dignified person, who in his 
military days had served not only in the line but on the stafi", 
and was perpendicular accordingly. I suppose the " Southern" 
is the headquarters of the rank and file of the late Confederate 
army, while the officers go to the " Pha'nix." However, the 
Colonel was very obliging, and I commend him to the attention 
of privates and non-commissioned officers of the disbanded 
" Federal " forces. 

The prettiest woman is not "overly" attractive on washing 
day, and it was my fortune to see Lexington first in a pouring 
raiu, one of the meanest of this horrible spring. Not a tree of 
all the thousands that line the narrow streets was in leaf, and 



THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. 15 

only the vivid green of the brave blue-grass in the public grounds 
and private inclosures served to remind one that spring had not 
been abolished and stricken from the almanac. 

The town is one hundred and two years old. Think of that, 
you "old" Kansans of twenty-five years' residence. I judge 
that the place has always grown very slowly. The brick houses 
on the ancient streets represent every style of architecture that 
has prevailed during a century. There are plenty of old log 
cabins in the town, which have been preserved by weather- 
boarding. There is a Masonic hall, an immense and rusty pile, 
that looks as if it could tell, if it would, something about the 
early days of the Obelisk. And then the trees ! Every day 
for a hundred years must have been "arbor day." Miles of ma- 
ples, and oaks and elms galore, and in every front yard the most 
magnificent evergreens, pines, hemlocks and spruces, their dark 
green contrasting with the velvety shine of the blue-grass. 

I wished to see the "oldest inhabitant," but the season is too 
late for him. When the almost forgotten sun comes back again; 
when the shadows of the new leaves dance on the old brick side- 
walks, the old man will come forth, leaning on his buckhorn- 
headed cane, and talk about "me and Henry Clay;" but I shall 
not see him. 

I wandered out to see the cadets at their drill, but found that 
in consequence of the mud and rain a parade in honor of the 
birthday of Henry Clay had been dismissed. Determined to 
see something or somebody, I soon found myself in a room with 
a college president and three professors. One of them, Lieuten- 
ant Howell, the military professor, had been stationed once at Fort 
Riley, with the artillery, which was a good-enough start for an 
acquaintance. The group proved a pleasant one, and with va- 
rious talk with the shrewd, kindly Scotch President Patterson 
and others, an hour passed away. 

I learned that I was near Ashland, the home of Henry Clay, 
and reverence for the Whig traditions of my family led me to 
wade through a rain-soaked pasture and climb several fences to 
see the place. I found a rather pretentious, modern-looking 
brick house, that did not seem to be in harmony with pictures I 



16 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

had seeu. A listless colored girl auswered the bell, and iu an- 
swer to my question said that visitors were shown the house, and 
ushered me into the library, a beautiful octagonal room, dimly 
lighted from above; the ceiling and wainscottiug, consisting en- 
tirely of paneled ash from the estate, showing nearly as dark as 
rosewood, and very handsome. A bust of Henry Clay stood in a 
shadowy recess. After sending in, like General Wade Hamp- 
ton, my "address," the maid servant reappeared and informed 
me that the family were sick and did not "wish to be bothered." 
That was all I saw of Ashland. However, it was some consola- 
tion to know that the present house was not built by Henry 
Clay, but by his son, James B. Clay, and that the property does 
not now belong to the family, and is rented. 

Coming back to the town, I overtook one of my new-found 
friends, the professors, who kindly piloted me to Transylvania 
University. I think the institution will go to heaven, eventually, 
for it has "come up through much tribulation." It was started 
while Kentucky was a province of Virginia. I think from the 
name it must have been one of Jefferson's ideas. I believe he 
wanted to call one of the States to be carved out of the Northwest 
Territory, Mesopotamia. The other-side-of-the-woods Univer- 
sity, ( I believe that is what Transylvania means,) had a varie- 
gated time of it. It early fell into the hands of the Presbyterians, 
and then one religious denomination after another took hold of it 
and ran it a greater or less distance into the earth, and then 
abandoned it to another. Still, in spite of all this, it was for 
years a great school. Prof. White (a noble old gentleman, by 
the way) showed me some figures. Up to 1859 the medical 
department graduated eighteen hundred and eighty doctors. 
Shade of Hippocrates, M, D., what an amount of suflfering these 
figures represented! What mountains of pills, what acres of 
blisters, what rivers of gore! Nearly every old-fashioned doctor 
in the South and West, thirty years ago, was a Transylvanian. 
There linger yet in the town traditions of the wild young saw- 
bones. It is told that in their day the country people shocked 
their corn over the graves of their friends, to protect the dead 
from the ente) prif^ing young disciples of science. 



THE HEART OF KENTUCKY. 17 

Some years ago Transylvania University was blended with 
the University of Kentucky, from Harrodsburg, adopted the 
name of the latter, and became an institution under charge of 
President Garfield's people, the Disciples, Christians, or, as an 
ungodly and stiff-necked generation call them, Campbellites. A 
gentleman named Bowman, a sort of Christian Col. Sellers, was 
chief engineer, and there was " millions in it " for awhile. Then 
came the decline and fall of Bowman; and now, as I understand 
it, the State of Kentucky proposes to dissolve a sort of limited 
partnership with the church, and run an agricultural, military 
and normal college of her own. Brother Bowman was not at all 
discouraged, but got up a scheme, which he presented to our Min- 
ister to Mexico, to purchase that interesting country for four 
million dollars. The Minister kindly sent the plan to the news- 
papers. Mr. Bowman was pushed for a place in Garfield's Cabi- 
net. Had his appointment tended to the subjugation of that 
red-headed Pedobaptist of a Conkling, I could wish it had been 
made. 

But to go a long way back. The portion of ex-Transylvania 
I visited was Morrison College, a big ugly building with a beau- 
tiful site. The rooms looked bare and desolate. The library 
was crowded with the oldest and oddest collection of books I 
ever saw, and in it was a planetarium, an instrument invented, I 
think, by a Lexington savant of long ago. The soldiers got at 
the planetarium during the war and disarranged some of the heav- 
enly bodies, but the gay old earth, as I learned from turning the 
crank, was able to come up smiling for her regular revolutions. 

Contrasted with our brand new University at Lawrence, this 
old Kentucky institution looked rather weather-beaten, as well it 
might, having been occupied as a hospital during the war, and 
fearfully knocked about. Still it is not buildings that make 
scholars, but brains, and the faculty of this old college are every- 
where praised for their learning and devotion. 

Lexington is a great town for academies and seminaries. There 
is a female college here which cost a gentleman named Hocker 
all he possessed and all he could borrow, his reward being to 
have his name given to the school ; but at last he sold it, and an- 



18 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

other name was attached, aud so, in the language of the great 
Latin poet whose name escapes me, Sic transit gloria Hocker. 

Every visitor is shown the cemetery here. I saw it amid the 
mist and the "tangled skeins of rain," and it was surpassingly 
beautiful. I despair of giving any idea of it. The central ob- 
ject is the monument to Henry Clay. I had heard it severely 
criticised, but it seemed to me majestic aud graceful. The mon- 
ument to the Confederate dead is a beautiful piece of work — 
simply a standard with broken staff aud furled aud tangled folds. 
The designer, unconsciously I have learned, embodied the senti- 
ment of the lines from "The Conquered Banner:" 
"Take that banner down; 'tis shattered — 

Broken is its staff and shattered, 

And the valiant hosts are scattered, 
Over whom it floated high." 

I had the pleasure of passing an evening with the enthusiastic 
Curator of the Kentucky State Historical Society, an organiza- 
tion, by the way, many years younger than the Kansas society. 
Prof. Ranck has written a fine history of Lexington, and oblig- 
ingly gave me several documents bearing on the history of the 
city and State. The Pennsylvanians who annually re-une at 
Atchison, may be gratified to know that the founder of Lexing- 
ton, and, it is claimed, also of Cincinnati and Dayton, was a 
Pennsylvaniau named Patterson. Mr. Patterson was actively in 
the town-site business in 1775. He was staking out this town 
when he heard the news of the battle of Lexington, and the site 
was named accordingly. The actual settlement was not made, 
however, until four years after. Prof Ranck showed me a plas- 
ter cast of the skull of Daniel Boone. It was not as symmetri- 
cal as the head I have seen carried on the shoulders of Daniel's 
grandson, Col. A. G. Boone, of Westport, Mo. The forehead 
was retreating. Daniel had not a "swell front," but the back of 
the head, where the "bar-fighting" and Indian-killing propensi- 
ties are located, shows a healthy development. 

Walking around the public square in Lexington, one reads the 
history of Kentucky on the signs. I saw on one, " Breckinridge 
A Shelby;" in that you have the story of a century of Ken- 



THE HEART OK KENTUCKY. 19 

tucky. Other names are connected with strange associations. 
"Beaucbarap," on one sign, brought up the "Beauchamp trag- 
edy," which has been made the* subject of a novel. These old 
Kentucky families hold on astonishingly. No matter what the 
mutations of war or peace or politics, the names are prominent 
now that were in the days of the "dark and bloody ground." I 
should think young men not born to the Kentucky purple would 
chafe under this, but they do not. Kentuckiaus tell me that 
talent is transmitted in these families, and hence supremacy. 
The Clays do not verify this theory, but on the other hand the 
Breckiuridges do. These remarkable people seem to inherit the 
gift of eloquence, personal beauty, and grace of manner, from 
generation to generation. They divided during the war, and 
were a power on both sides. 

I had intended to say something about the relations of politi- 
cal parties here, the idea of a New Kentucky and other matters 
which would have interested my friend Willard Davis, of Kan- 
sas, a former Lexingtonian, but I have gossipped, I fear, past 
the point of interest. 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 

Cave City, Ky., April Id, 1881. 

One of the old-fashioned curiosities of the United States is the 
Mammoth Cave of Kentucky. The word "mammoth" has an 
old-time sound, and I believe is only applied now to circuses, 
clothing stores, and the great Cave itself. The Cave has been 
visited for the better part of a century, and in the way of descrip- 
tion there is really nothing new to tell ; so I will deal principally 
in personal impressions. 

Leaving Louisville by the Louisville & Nashville road at 11:35 
on Thursday last, we journeyed, for a wonder, by the light of an 
unclouded sun, and saw nothing of interest until the long ascent 
of Muldrough's Hill was reached, where there is some fancy en- 
gineering in the way of steep grades, and airy, high-hung bridges ; 
and so we came to Elizabethtown, and a sight of the prettiest 
girl who resides in that sleepy borough, or for many miles around. 
She stood, a slender and graceful figure, in the depot door, and 
she held in her hand a gorgeous bunch of daffodils that gleamed 
in golden contrast with the black and gray garb which she wore. 
Her eyes were violet, while her eyebrows were dark, almost 
black, and her hair the hue that is auburn in the shade and yel- 
low in the sun. Her features were not regular, but her grave, 
slow-coming smile, as some one spoke to her, was full of dignity 
and sweetness, and redeemed any defect which an over-critical 
eye might have discovered. To complete the picture, one shapely, 
though not excessively small foot, peeped beneath her dress. 
Everybody on the side of the car next to the depot looked at 
her, but she seemed as unconscious as the great bouquet of daffo- 
dils she carried. She seemed to light the dingy depot, and to be 
the embodiment of Spring. Who she was, none of the pilgrims 
who looked upon her that April day will ever know: how she 
looked, they will not soon forget. 
,20) 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 21 

As you go southward you reach hamlets made famous by the 
war. At Mumfordsville the towu is surrounded by old unin- 
closed commons, as if troops had been encamped there for some 
time; and green mounds on either side of Green river mark 
where batteries were located in a line of defensive works. Ma- 
sonry crumbles, and iron is eaten up by rust. There is nothing 
so indestructible as a heap of earth thrown up by the spade. It 
withstands a fire under which stone walls are pulverized, and 
covering itself with sod, defies the frosts and rains of years. I 
doubt not that a few hours' work would again make those old 
grass-grown redoubts serviceable. 

At Rowlett's Station, a few miles below Mumfordsville, a 
sharp fight took place between a German Union volunteer force, 
and a body of Texas Rangers under Gen. Terry. At Cave Hill 
Cemetery, in Louisville, there is to be seen the monument of 
thirty-two of the Union soldiers who fell in this action. 

Cave City, eighty-five miles from Louisville, is reached at 3 
o'clock in the afternoon, and thence you take McCoy's stages for 
the Mammoth Cave, eight or nine miles distant, according to the 
state of the roads. Last Thursday it was nine miles. 

The road was worthy of the county of Edmonson, one of the 
roughest, woodiest and most backward of Kentucky counties. 
The county has but one town, Brownsville, the county seat, a 
God-forsaken hamlet, twelve mil.es from the railroad or any- 
where else. The blufl^s of Green river occupy the larger part of 
the county, and moonshiners occupy the bluffs, save when they 
resign in favor of the United States Marshal's merry men, who 
pursue them in force. Up rocky hills and down deep ravines 
and through deposits of red clay mud, the Concord coach made 
its way slowly, though drawn by four good horses. There were 
but two frame houses along the road, but plenty of log cabins, 
situated in small patches of wretched land cleared in the midst 
of the forest. The road for much of the distance wound along 
the summit of the ridge, and on either hand were tremendous 
bowl-shaped depressions, covered with forest, as is all the country. 
This region has no running streams on the surface. Water for 
the crumpled-horned, ewe-necked, rat-tailed, red-and-white "cow 
2 



22 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

brutes" we saw, is obtained from rain-water ponds and springs. 
All the streams are subterranean, cut through .the underlying 
limestone. As if the "surface indications " of poverty were not 
enough, a cyclone had swept through the timber, and the fallen 
trees held up in their roots for our inspection great masses of 
yellow clay and slabs of rock. 

The country was by no means uninhabited. The cabins 
swarmed with children, and groups of these products of the hills 
appeared at the roadside and oifered flint arrow-heads and "rat- 
tle stones " for sale. It was a raw day. They were barefooted, and 
I felt very sorry for them — and was correspondingly disgusted to 
learn afterward that it was their custom in cold weather to slip 
off their shoes and stockings on the approach of the coach, and 
resume ttem -after its departure. Some of these children had 
bright, strong faces, and looked very much like the. groups de- 
picted in Porte Crayon's sketches of the mountain country of 
Virginia. Occasionally we met an ox-team, the wagon being of 
a pattern that would have made the Studebakers laugh them- 
selves to death. 

As the sun was declining we emerged into a little clearing, in 
front of the Mammoth Cave Hotel, the only house near the great 
cave. Nobody knows how old the hotel is. It is a big log tavern, 
weatherboarded and painted white, erected piecemeal during a 
period of fifty years and upward, until it has become a vast, 
rambling affair, capable of accommodating two hundred guests. 
No two windows are on a line with each other, and the structure 
is nearly as much of a curiosity as the Mammoth Cave itself. 
There is no gas, no electric bells, no anything peculiar to a fash" 
ionable hotel; but there is an immense piazza, six hundred feet 
long and wide in proportion, great fireplaces which will burn a 
cord of wood at once, rooms of all shapes and sizes, no long stairs 
to climb, immense forest trees in the great yard, and in short, it 
must be in summer a dear old rambling, breezy place, where the 
young might dream of the future and the old of the past, and the 
sounds of the toiling, struggling, fighting world grow faint and 
far away. 

The season does, not open until June, and there were but two 
families at the hotel. 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 23 

My first visit to the Cave was made on the night of toy arrival. 
The party of seven persons, including three children, left the hotel 
after sunset and before moonrise. Each member was provided 
with a walking-stick and a rude swinging lard-oil lamp. We 
made our way through the old garden, over a stile, down the steep 
sides of a wooded ravine for two or three hundred yards, and 
paused at the bottom to listen to the monotonous sound of a stream 
of falling water. In a moment more, we descend into a dark cav- 
ity in the ground, surrounded on three sides by mossy, vine-cov- 
ered rocks, and shadowed by tall trees. On the third side was the 
incline and rude steps by which we had descended. On our left 
was a dark shadow, crossed by the white line of the little water- 
fall ; it was the entrance to the Mammoth Cave, and, to use a 
matter-of-fact illustration, it looked very like a railroad tunnel. 
Going in some distance, we came to an iron-grated gate, which 
made one think of the Pilgrim's Progress. Entering this, we were 
in the grand gallery of the Cave proper. I will not give here a 
detailed account of our wanderings that night. For hours we 
walked and climbed and crept and wondered, under the guidance 
of Old Matt, the black man who has piloted people about the 
Cave for forty years. At midnight we stood again in the open 
air; the cold, round m ion looked down through the bare tree-tops 
into the darksome dell, and the waterfall plashed on the rocks 
below, and so strongly do trifles impress us at remarkable times, 
that I remember as we made our way through the garden to the 
long, shadowy piazza, stretching away like a ship's deck, a great 
peacock perched on a tree, wakened the night with his sharp and 
angry scream. 

That night I walked the Cave in my dreams; and getting up 
early in the morning, wandered past the entrance of the Cave 
and on by the forest road to Green river, perhaps half a mile 
away. It was the middle of April, and a long distance south of 
Kansas, yet there was scarcely a sign of spring; a few leaves of 
the dog-tooth violet were all I saw, and the buckeye, the pioneer 
of spring, showed only leaf-buds. Yet the air, so to speak, 
seemed to be "breaking," as the ice does in the rivers, and there 
seemed to be a hopeful note in the morning chorus of the birds. 



24 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

At ten o'clock in the morning I started again for the Cave, in 
company with the Mellon family, of Pittsburgh, who had stopped 
on their way home from Florida. Mrs. Mellon was a Leaven- 
worth girl, and the daughter of my old friend, the late General 
Larimer; so Kansas had two representatives in the party. 

We took as a guide, the famous William, a younger and much 
better guide than Matt, who has become old and indifferent. On 
this trip we took in places of interest not visited the night be- 
fore; and here I may as well record generally my impressions. 

I had heard it said that the Mammoth Cave should be de- 
scribed by Dante and illustrated by Dore, but it did not impress 
me with any special sense of awfulness or mystery. There was 
something human, social and charming about it. Perhaps it is 
because you come at once upon signs of human occupancy. In 
the war of 1812 saltpetre was manufactured here for the Amer- 
ican army, and here remain the old loe pipes, the vats, and heaps 
of leached nitrous earth. Here they say are wheel ruts and the 
tracks of oxen. It was curious to think that the art of man, in 
the darkness of this wild place, found the substance which 
blazed and roared perhaps from the decks of Perry's ships; or, 
it may be that this "villainous saltpetre," gathered in the forest 
depths, carried death to the heart of Tecumseh, son of the wil- 
derness. 

Besides, all through the Cave on the walls, the names of thou- 
sands of visitors were carved in the rock or marked on the walls 
by the smoke of lamps. There are heaps of stones piled up by 
visitors from the various States, from foreign countries, and vari 
ous organizations. Kentucky has the largest cairn; and after 
some search I found a small heap raised for Kansas. It was 
distinguishable by a large stone marked "C. H. Hindman, 
1880." Young William Larimer Mellon added to the monu- 
ment for his mother's and grandfather's sake, and I had piled on 
as large a stone as two men could lift, and Mr. Klett, the super- 
intendent of the Cave, told me he would have a good and suffi- 
cient sign painted. There is a very large pile erected to the 
memory of General Robert E. Lee, and in one of the passages 
is a Garfield and Arthur pile. We asked William if he con- 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 25 

tributed to that pile, and he said it depended on the politics of 
the party he was taking through the cave. 

The air of the Cave is singularly sweet and delicate. It main- 
tains an average temperature of 59° the year round. There is 
nothing damp, slimy or cavernous about the place. There is 
water in places, but it is clean water. In old times visitors were 
accustomed to put on a special dress for explorations, but this is 
not necessary. 

While, as I have said before, the Cave did not impress me with 
its awfulness, it struck me as wonderfully interesting. There is a 
sort of winning and gentle majesty about it. The floor is in many 
places a red sand, which becomes hard and smooth and affords a 
perfect pavement, and the colors are all in harmony. The ceil- 
ings of the great galleries, eighty feet wide and sixty feet high, 
are a soft tint of gray, like the coming of the dawn, and are smooth 
as if prepared by the hand of man. In other portions of the Cave, 
the walls were yellowish brown ; in others a velvety black. The 
stalactites and stalagmites in the Cave, beyond the river Styx, are 
pure white, but those on the hither side are brown, in most in- 
stances, though sometimes white, like spermaceti. 

The most beautiful sight to me, on the round we made on my 
first visit, was the "Star Chamber." The ceiling of this great 
room is dark and spangled with crystals. The guide took away 
the lights, and in the silence and semi-darkness you looked 
upward, and — there seemed no mistake — the roof of the cavern 
had gone, and for the width of the departed roof you saw the 
sky, as plainly as I see the paper I am writing on. There it was 
— the blue, moonless but faintly star-lit sky of moist and early 
spring. It was a perfect illusion. It required no effort of the 
imagination. A movement of the screened lights, and more faint 
stars appeared; another, and dark, smoky, filmy clouds swept 
across the firmament. Spring was the season, and, as to the 
time, 

" It was the hour when from the boughs 
The nightingale's high song is heard ; 
It was the hour when lovers' vows 

Seem sweet in every whispered word." 



26 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

Next to this came the Great Egyptian Dome, which I saw on 
my second visit. This is an immensely high room, looking as 
lofty as the dome of the capitol at Washington. There are here 
immense columns, one square, with a capital fluted and carved to 
perfection; others resembled Corinthian columns; and one, a 
perfectly circular pillar, seemed transplanted from one of the 
great cathedrals of Europe. The floor here is very rough, cov- 
ered, as many of the chambers are, by great masses of fallen 
rock. Occasionally there is falling water; it is strange to hear, 
hundreds of feet underground, all the sounds of the summer rain. 
The bottom of Bandit's Cave is a mere incline of broken frag- 
ments, but, however rough the base, the ceiling is usually smooth. 
In one chamber (I do not remember the names of one in ten of 
them), the ceiling seems to have been moulded, not carved, as if 
it had been covered with stucco, and then rounded forms im- 
printed, and all, by the Bengal lights, shows that soft gray, yet 
almost white tint, which somehow makes one think of babyhood 
and sleeping innocence. 

The domes, as they are called, are accompanied by pits. It 
is as if circular excavation was made in the floor of the rotunda 
in the capitol at Washington. There is Gorin's Dome, and 
Shelby's Dome, and many others, all varying and yetalike; these 
are connected by winding passages through which one can walk 
with little difiiculty, and by yet other passages through which the 
guides creep in their exploration, pushing their lamps before them 
and making arrows on the walls to indicate the direction they 
came. 

It is not generally understood that the Mammoth Cave is con- 
structed in five stories. There are avenues under avenues, and 
chambers under chambers. Not long since, some lumber needed 
for a stairway in the Egyptian Dome was passed down through 
the roof from Audubon avenue. It is known that the Rotunda 
is under the present summer dining room of the hotel. The dis- 
covery was made by some workmen digging a cistern, who heard 
voices beneath them. While sounds are thus transmitted, there 
is no echo in the cave, except at Echo river, which I was unable 
to visit on account of intervening high water. We once thought 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 2t 

we beard a very remarkable ecbo, but it turned out to be William, 
who is a good ventriloquist. 

The pleasant, bracing air, the constant variety of scenery, and 
the climbing, stumbling, and little mishaps, make the tour a pleas- 
ant one. Fat Man's Misery is a long, winding, narrow groove in 
the floor of a passage, the "narrowness" reaching about to the 
waist. As your correspondent, who was a " citizen on foot" at the 
rear of the procession, entered upon this narrow way, the rest of 
the company bade him a very "good evening," but he struggled 
through. He is inclined to think, however, that Prouty would 
get "hung up" for ninety days. There is, following this, a Tall 
Man'^ Misery, where you must stoop a long distance, and then 
you emerge into a loftier place called the Great Relief. 

The formations, stalactites and stalagmites are much rarer than 
I expected to see. They exist in their beauty beyond the river. 
This much-talked-about river is probably a branch of Green 
river, into which it certainly empties. All through the cave are 
masses of gravel and sand, and driftwood is seen sticking in the 
clefts of the ceiling. In the lower levels the passages are some- 
times entirely filled with water. The Dead Sea is a dull pool of 
deep, turbid water, and when I saw it, was an obstruction to 
further progress. The Bottomless Pit looks like a deep well, and 
is by no means bottomless. The Smoke House is a curious place, 
the ceiling having been worn into forms which resemble not only 
hams, but sides and shoulders. As a visitor from "Hogtown," I 
was of course deeply impressed. The church is a fine room, not 
far from the entrance, with a projecting rock on one side, called the 
Pulpit. Religious services were held here two years ago, the 
great room being lighted by two hundred lamps. Seven or eight 
hundred persons were present, exclusive of the bats, of which 
there are several millions. These queer "birds" do not stray far 
from the mouth, and move out in warm weather. 

The only mdancholy feature of the Cave is some roofless stone 
houses, erected years ago for consumptive patients, who fancied 
that the perfectly even temperature of the Cave would benefit 
them. Poor creatures! — how ghastly must their wan faces have 
looked as they gazed at each other in the weird lamp-light. One 



/ \^^ ^yv^<-^^ 



28 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

died, and the experiment was abandoned. Not even in this place, 
down deep in the earth, may one avoid the " fell sergeant Death," 
and better far it is to meet him in peace wherever he may come, 
than doom ourselves to fruitless journeyings and pitiful exile 
from friends to avoid him. 

The Mammoth Cave is something to be always remembered, 
but the returning visitor can never describe it to his friends. I 
might write on for hours, and convey to others no clear impres- 
sion. Pictures do not do it justice; photographs least of all. 
For myself, I do not remember by name many of the "show 
places," but I shall never forget the vine-hung entrance, the cas- 
cade, the iron door, the smooth floors, the sweet air, the flicker- 
ing lights, the moving shadows, the lofty arches, the low and 
winding passages, the dripping waters, the bubbling springs, the 
thousands of names inscribed from year to year, the ladders and 
the bridges, the pillars, the merry voices of ray companions; the 
pits we looked down at, and the ceilings we looked up to; the 
curious forms we saw, the "Fat Girl," the profile of Washing- 
ton, the "Giant and Giantess;" the cold air that warned us we 
were approaching the outer world again; the moon of midnight _ 
and the sun of noon that greeted our return. 

I wish every Kansan, or "any other man" who does me the 
honor to read this account, would visit the Mammoth Cave; and 
at present there is some hope that this wonder is to be made a 
matter of more popular interest. 

The history of the Cave is involved in some confusion. It early 
became the property of Dr. Croghan, a brother of the gallant 
Col. Croghan, one of the heroes of the war of 1812. From Dr. 
Croghan, who was a bachelor, it passed into the hands of his 
brother's family. Everybody knows the propensity of the old 
regular army families to perpetuate themselves in the service; con- 
sequently the Mammoth Cave estate, of some 2,000 acres, is now 
owned by several heirs, nearly all of them army officers. One 
of these is Captain Wheeler, honorably known in connection with 
the Government surveys west of the 100th principal meridian. 
Up to last fall, the hotel was run by a worthy old gentleman, born 
in the vicinity, named Miller, who understood the hotel to be a 



THE MAMMOTH CAVE. 29' 

country tavern. On behalf of Captain Wheeler, Mr. Francis 
Klett, formerly of the Austrian army, and later connected with 
the Wheeler survey, has taken charge of the property; has intro- 
duced many needed reforms, is renovating and repairing the 
premises, and is endeavoring to modernize, energize and advertise. 
It will surprise most Kansans to know that the Mammoth Cave, 
one of the wonders of the world, has never averaged over two 
thousand visitors a year. It should have forty thousand. 

I cannot imagine a more instructive and agreeable trip for a 
large party of Kansas excursionists, than from Atchison to Look- 
out Mountain, via the Mammoth Cave. Save those who served 
in the army, Kansas people know nothing of the South. To the 
ladies of the party it would be a visit to a new and strange coun- 
try, as different from Kansas as could well be imagined. How 
these gay people from the State of brag and breeze would wake 
the echoes of Edmonson county; how they would promenade the 
great piazza of the Mammoth Cave Hotel ; how they would hunt 
the lair of the moonshiner, and write "Ad Astra per Aspera'' all 
over the Mammoth Cave. The time should be in the leafy month 
of June, and care should be taken to ascertain in advance if the 
river Styx is crossable. A reduction of twenty-five per cent, is 
made to parties of ten and upward. A person visiting the Cave 
alone must lay down about ten dollars, which includes three dol- 
lars stage fare to and from Cave City, which charge, by the way, 
is unreasonable. 

For myself, the visit to the Cave was a charming experience. 
I found everybody kind and obliging, and enjoyed every moment 
of my stay. 

I had no companion on ray return to Cave City, except the black 
driver, and, while his name was not Macaulay or Fronde, he was 
a "powerful" historian. Here is a chapter about the "war be- 
tween the States:" 

"Dar was about fifteen hundred of Morgan's men in de town, 
[Bowling Green, I believe,] and one of Gineral Morgan's staff 
ossifers was up on a box a raakin' a speech. He was a hoUerin' 
an' a wavin' his sword and handkercher, an' sayiu' that they was 
a goin' right straight to Looieville, an' the women stood in the 



30 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

do's and windus and waved haudkerchers, and cheered and hol- 
lered. 'Bout one hundred and fifty of Woolfud's men, with a lot 
of wagging, was a comin' in on de road. A man, he went out 
on the road, an' tole 'em dat de town was jess full of Morgan's 
men — fifteen hundred or mo'. The Captain, he 'lowed he 
couldn't get back, 'cos ef he did they'd hear of it, sho, and put 
out after him and get him, and he said he reckoned he'd have to 
go ahead and pull through wid de waggins somehow. So, while 
the speakin' was goiu' on, as I tole ye, Woolfud's men come 
around the kawner jess a whoopen. Crack, bang, bang, sping, 
ta, ta, ta, ta-a-a-a, went dera kyarbeens ; two or free men and bosses 
tumbled; de women fell outeu de do's and windus, and Mor- 
gan's men dey got out and run for eight miles, and Woolfud's 
men dey closed up and went on fru wid de waggins." 



"TENTING ON THE OLD CAMP GROUND." • 

Nashville, Tenn., April 19, 1881. 

Cave City, Barren couuty, Kentucky, presented no special 
attractions except a "sing" which reminded me of my departed 
youth. It was a grand free entertainment to exhibit the profi- 
ciency of the "class." The teacher, a gentleman from Indiana, 
looked like John Speer, and had a voice like John K. Wright, 
of Junction City. When I say that the "show-piece" of the 
evening was "Fairy Moonlight," some idea can be formed of the 
antiquity of the programme. The audience was large. A gen- 
tleman who walked with me to the "Union Church," where the 
"concord of sweet sounds" was to come oiF, said that people had 
come up from "Bear Wallow." That reminded me of an old 
forgotten experiment at educating Indians^. At a school estab- 
lished for Indians at "Bear Wallow," old Abram Burnett, once 
chief of the Pottawatoraies in Kansas, was educated. In circum- 
ference he exceeded any other man I ever saw, and he had adopted 
at least one of the habits of the white man — he never missed a 
circus. I asked some questions about "Bear Wallow," but my 
man knew nothing about the place, except that he once got a horse 
shod there. At Cave City I met the only drunken man I saw in 
the whisky-making State of Kentucky. He seemed much de- 
jected, as well he might, for he informed me that he procured the 
liquid cause of his depression at a drug store. 

Leaviflg Cave City before sunrise, the train sped southward, 
and in fifty miles we came Upon signs of spring, and in twenty- 
five more we met the late lingerer in the lap of winter on her 
journey to the north. 

It was what would be called, even in Kansas, sC perfect day. 
The sun shoue,and we were flying southward like a swallow. 
Approaching Nashville, the country grew gayer and finer with 
every mile. The plows were running in all the fields ; the 
\vheat fields and the pastures were emerald ; on the summit of 
( 31 ) 



32 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

every rise of ground was some quaint house, with its great chim- 
neys, embowered in evergreens and snowy-blossomed cherries ; 
while here and there the ever-present feature of the Southern 
spring landscape, the "old field" orwayside peach tree, glowed 
like a rosy flame. One did not think of war in gazing on this 
gentle scene ; but, before we thought, the sad reminder came. 
The train passed swiftly by the great Government cemetery, 
eight miles north of Nashville, where the thousands who died in 
and around that city have been gathered. But amid those mute, 
white tokens of the loved and lost, there rose a consolation. 
High above them, between us and the sky and sun, floated the 
flag of the United States of America. It seemed almost trans- 
parent in the sunlight, as if it were something belonging to the 
heavens rather than the earth. I had seen that flag with a 
choking heart when an ocean rolled between me and my native 
land, but never did it affect me as when I caught that momentary 
glance, and realized what it had cost to plant it there, the sym- 
bol of a strong and eternal Union. 

"Nashville!" said Ihe brakeraan, and I looked out the window 
on the right-hand side of the train as we approached the east end 
of the bridge, and realized that the "fashion of this world passeth 
away." Where I had last seen the ten white rows of company 
tents, the one long line of the officers' tents along the river bank, 
and the sentries walking their beats, each man executing his 
"about face" at the same time, there were piles of lumber and 
an ugly wooden structure with the inscription, "Pump Factory." 
That was all. Edgefield, which I left a village, had grown into 
a young city, and our old camp, policed every day with such 
care, where we drilled and mounted guard and paraded for nine 
long months, was a lumber yard and a pump factory. 

Since that first surprise, I have explored this town, so well re- 
membered by thousands of former soldiers, and find it a queer 
mingling of the new and the old. 

The "disbanded volunteer" will find, I think, mixed up with 
new and often splendid structures, every house he knew while 
here. The town has extended a long distance to the north and 
south, but in the old city the narrow, rocky streets still wear a 
familiar look. 



"tenting on the old camp ground." 33 

Fiuding an old acquaintance, I went first to the capitol. The 
building, when I saw it for the first time, was occupied by the 
First Middle Tennessee Infantry, the dirtiest regiment I ever 
saw. They were cleaned out, however, shortly afterward, and 
the building also, but the grounds consisted of some earthworks 
and a stone quarry. All that is changed. The plain and sim- 
ple, yet beautiful, building is now surrounded by green terraces, 
graveled walks and shrubbery. A copy of Clark Mills's bronze 
equestrian statue of General Jackson stands, or rather rears, on 
the east front. I have never fancied this long-legged general on 
his fat horse, but I suppose I ought not to set up ray private 
judgment against the artistic taste of Tennessee. 

The interior of the building, which once seemed magnificent to 
us "Johnny Raws," somehow seemed to have lost its grandeur. 
The Legislature had adjourned, and the Bill Higgins of the Ten- 
nessee House had not cleaned up. The carpets were worn and 
dirty, the old-fashioned desks were likewise, and numerous bills 
strewed the floor, though no paper wads indicated that the Ten- 
nessee statesmen had indulged in the closing festivities peculiar to 
a Kansas Legislature. The Senate chamber looked more forlorn 
than the House. The old coal stove that warmed the room was 
the most thoroughly spit upon of any article of furniture that 
ever met ray gaze. If the session had lasted a little longer I 
think it would have disappeared in a flood of "arabeer." The 
State offices were plain apartments, and mostly deserted. I looked 
in vain, in the State Treasurer's ofiice, for such a vault and safe 
as John Francis presides over, and learned that the State of Ten- 
nessee does not keep its money in hand, but has it scattered over 
the State in some twenty-six banks. An oasis was finally reached 
in the State Library. This fine room and its valuable contents 
have been for some tirae under the charge of Mrs. Hatton, the 
widow of a Confederate general, and her daughter, and woman's 
taste and care are everywhere visible.. There is a very fine collec 
tion of portraits, mostly of erainent Teunesseeans, and a grea 
store of relics of all sorts, araong others the cap of General Pat 
Cleburne, who was killed at the battle of Franklin, and guns be 
longing to all the ancient Tennessee hunters. The first $5 green 



34 SOrTHERN T.ETTERS. 

back ever issued is in this collection. It was discovered iu a pile 
of bills in a Nashville bank. There is a fine portrait of General' 
Thomas in the room, amidst quite a crowd of Confederates, and 
he stands side by side with Governor Brownlow. The portrait 
of the wife of General Jackson interested me. She has been 
represented as a kind, motherly, but plain-featured and ignorant 
woman. The portrait represents her as a woman who must have 
been beautiful in her youth, and an old gentleman who knew her 
assured me that she was a lovely person, and far more intelligent 
than is popularly believed. 

The capitol was an interesting spot, but the object that brought 
back the greatest throng of recollections was the old Nashville 
theater. Its exterior presents the same appearance that I remem- 
ber in 1862. The door was open, and I went up into the deserted 
gallery. They have changed things somewhat, and put in chairs 
in the place of the old benches, but it is about the same rusty^ 
dusty old place it always was. I recognized iu the gallery the 
same pen in which the unrepentant Magdaleues used to sit, all 
alone in their sins. The crowds I have seen in that old house; 
just one mass of blue from "pit to dome," broken only by the 
bayonets of the provost guard, the Eighth Kansas; and then the 
voices, the laughs, the cheers, the thunder of army brogans, and 
the array cries, whatever they happen to be. At one time the 
"slogan" was "Oh, Joe!" and then, "Here's your mule" had a 
great run. How superior we thought the stock actors, and how 
we adopted this one or that as a favorite. There was Mrs. Hattie 
Bernard, who played everything, from Betsy Baker to Desdemona ; 
and there was Mr. Claude Hamilton, who was equally obliging 
with male characters; and there was old man Jordan, who played 
Toodles, and Baillie Nicol Jarvie iu "Rob Roy; " and there was 
Miss Annie Scanlan, and pretty Mrs. Duncan, who was greatly 
pitied by the soldiery because it was said that her husband ill- 
treated her, and who, in fact, played Ophelia one night with a 
bad black eye; and then in later days came Matilda Heron and 
played "Camille" to a tremendous audience; though the most ter- 
rific jam was the night when Capt. Sheridan, of the Signal Corps, 
appeared as Macbeth, to the music of three patriotic airs by the 



"tenting on the old camp grocjnd/ 3o 

orchestra, as ordered by the Post Coramander. That was an event. 
Standing in the old gallery it was easy to bring back all the past, 
and to people the stage again with the kings, queens, nobles, sol- 
diers, gay gallants and ladies fair; villains and bravos, crazed 
lovers and cruel fathers that once walked it; but coming out into 
the street we saw on the walls in big blue letters, that Miss Mary 
Anderson, who was sucking candy in short dresses when the old 
theater was in its prime, would appear next Monday evening as 
Parthenia in "Ingomar"— and we realized that nearly twenty 
years had flown. 

Another landmark was the present Maxwell House, which, dur- 
ing the war, stood unfinished, and was used as a sort of barracks. 
It was the depot of the thousands of convalescents in their trans- 
fer to the front. Here the recuperating heroes had clothing issued 
to them, including an absurd long-tailed, dark-blue coat, de- 
scribed somewhere in the army regulations as a "dress coat." It 
looked like a cross between a window-shutter and a dressing-gown, 
and was nicknamed a "convalescent" coat by the hardy veterans 
who wore blouses. There was a name also for the convalescents 
themselves, which doubtless is still remembered. The Maxwell 
House is now the great hotel of Nashville, taking the place the 
St. Cloud occupied in the war-time. 

The devil is said to be old, and he seems to have perpetually 
the same old locations. His Nashville address was in the war- 
time "Smoky Row," and is still. The same horrible, sunken, 
weather-stained old frame and brick houses, haunts where Bill 
Sikes might have murdered Nancy, are in existence that twenty 
years ago witnessed scenes of indescribable riot, brutality and 
shame. Mingled with these are more pretentious structures of 
modern growth, but nothing but the fires of the last day will 
ever thoroughly purge the place. It retains its hideous name 
and character. 

The old wooden railroad bridge has been replaced by an iron 
^ructure, but the railroad "scenery" about the Louisville & 
Nashville depot, and beyond, is much the same, including the 
long lines of trestle-work extending toward the Chattanooga 
depot. 



36 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

Around the old market square some fine new buildings have 
•been erected. The row on the north side, where great stores of 
ordnance were formerly kept, is, however, recognizable. The old 
building of the Southern Methodist Book Concern has given place 
to a large, new and rather handsome structure. 

In a previous letter I have mentioned the enduring character 
•of earthworks. This is abundantly demonstrated about Nash- 
ville. The outline of Forts Morton and Negley is as clearly dis- 
■cernible against the sky, on the .summits of the high hills, as ou 
the day they were thrown up. They may endure until in some 
future age the learned shall discuss the purpose of their con- 
struction. 

Nashville in detail is not a beautiful city. It seems less so 
now than it did twenty years ago, when it had a sort of shady 
dignity and grace about it, in spite of war and trouble. Now 
there is too much of a mixture of hovels and palaces; too much 
yellow clay and bare rock in sight; but, seen as a whole, it is a 
very striking and picturesque town. Standing on the high porch 
of the capitol, which overlooks the whole city and the valley of 
the Cumberland until it is shut in by the encircling chains of 
saw-like hills, I know of few more impressive pictures. Old 
Nashville lies in a dark mass of roofs, chimneys, spires and tree- 
tops, wreathed in a mist or smoke, on the slopes of the capitoline 
hill. Up and down the river, north and south, stretches the new 
town, until the houses become scattered and the country begins; 
but the most impressive feature is the line of public institutions 
encircling the city like a line of fortifications. First, on the 
south, is the great cotton factory; next the massive building of 
Fisk University; then the three buildings of Vanderbilt Uni- 
versity; then the Baptist college for colored people; and thence, 
on a line drawn toward the river, are Central Tennessee College, 
a Methodist institution for colored people; the University of 
Nashville, and the various State asylums. Instead of warlike 
defenses, ditch and parapet and embrasure, glacis and abattis, 
the city is surrounded by a cordon reared by Business, Education 
and Charity — good generals they, who march to the rescue of the 
world. 



"tenting on the old camp ground." 37 

No one, I think, who has ever seen war, can, in spite of the 
remembrance of its horrors, fail to feel at times something of the 
spirit of Othello's pathetic farewell, and yield himself to " the spell 
the martial music weaves." It seems a trifle strange here, after all 
the vanished years, to miss the old sights: the staff officers and 
orderlies galloping about; the steady tramp of a regiment or so 
moving out to open ground under the guns of Fort Negley for 
drill or inspection, their arms swaying or glittering in the sun, or 
coming with a crash to "shoulder," as they pass the post head- 
quarters ; but, after all, peace is far better. There are no great 
hospitals now, filled with pale and dying sufferers; there are no 
ambulances now, coming in from the front with their freight of 
pain; there are no sad processions now — no companies with re- 
versed arms and slow drum-beat. All that has gone. Here now 
are the cheerful rattle of wheels, and groups of children on their 
way to school, and rising smoke and the clang of bells, and the 
scream of steam whistles, and all that goes to make up the Nash- 
ville of prosperous peace, of which I shall speak of at another 

time. 

3 



A BLACK UNIVERSITY. 

V 

Nashville, Tenn., April 20, 1881. 

If you wish to learn anythiug in this section of the country, 
you must go and see it for yourself. No matter how desirous 
those whom you interrogate may be to give you the best infor- 
mation possible, no matter how conscientious may be your 
witnesses, the testimony is so conflicting and confused as to be 
nearly valueless. 

Take the matter of the education 6^" the colored people. One 
man — and he is as apt to be a Southern Republican as a Southern 
Democrat — will tell you that they learn nothing; another, that 
a knowledge of reading and writing is becoming generally dif- 
fused among them, and nothing more; and here and there is a 
man who will tell you that their advance depends only on the 
character of their instructors, and that, all things being equal, 
they progress nearly or quite as well as white students. 

It was with a view to satisfying my own mind, and laying re- 
sults exactly as I found them before the readers of The Cham- 
pion, that yesterday I visited Fisk University, which, with the 
possible exception of Atlanta University, is the best equipped 
school for colored people in the South. I told no one I was 
going; I asked no one's opinion, save that while waiting for the 
street car, I stepped into a news depot and asked the dealer, a 
German Republican, if he ever sold the students of any of the 
colored institutions of learning any newspapers, and he said, very 
few ; and he thought they read no journals except religious 
papers. This was not encouraging to begin with. 

The University is well out of the thickly-populated portion of 
the city, near the former site, I believe, of a field work called 
Fort Gillem. The street railway does not approach nearer than 
a quarter of a mile. Unheralded and unknown, I found myself 
in front of a fine brick building with white stone trimmings, and 
(38) 



A BLACK UNIVERSITY. 39 

situated in a tract of twenty acres, bright with grass and shrub- 
bery. The house cost one hundred thousand dollars. 

I had no letter of introduction, and hunted up the first white 
man I could, the Treasurer, and was introduced to the President, 
Rev. A. M. Cravath, who looked like a New England Congrega- 
tional clergyman. All the faculty I met seemed New Englanders 
and Congregationalists, though I believe some are Presbyterians 
— it is easy to mistake one denomination for the other. At any 
rate, I have not seen so much Yankee in any other spot in the 
8outh. There was system, order, promptaess, nicety everywhere. 
It was evident that these educators had been brought up to be- 
lieve the word "shiftless" the most abhorrent in the language. 

After a few moments conversation with the President, we went 
to the chapel, where I sat on the platform to take a good square 
look at the audience of students. The room was large, well fur- 
nished, and scrupulously clean. There was a picture of General 
Clinton B. Fisk over the center of the platform. There were 
busts of Charles Sumner and John Brown on brackets. It was 
like being in Kansas. There was, of course, a fine cabinet organ. 
The young people sat quietly. I heard no shutWiug or giggling; 
all seemed reverent expectation. There was every shade of com- 
plexion and variety of feature. There were girls and boys as 
black as if they had been born in Asbantee; there were young 
men who were whiter than any Cuban or Mexican ; there was 
the unmistakable African face, and there were cheeks in which 
the rosy flush was visible; there was the heavy-set black who 
seemed the descendant of field hands from the flood, and there 
were features that seemed to have come down through a long line 
of students and scholars. But all were well dressed, silent and 
attentive. 

They sang a hymn, and I will not attempt to describe the beauty 
of the singing. There was prayer, and the reading of the Scrip- 
tures in the responsive manner, and more music, and then the 
word was given to clear the room, "gentlemen first." 

It was very odd in a man from Kansas, where we are always 
talking about ourselves and old John Brown's devotion to free- 
dom — the old firm, you know, of Us & Brown; but I started at 



40 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

the word "gentlemen." I had never heard it thus applied before. 
And yet why not? They looked like gentlemen. The students 
at our State University could have made no better show in the 
matter of dress and bearing than these sons of slaves, as, moving 
in exact time to a march by the organ, they filed out of the room. 

Then I picked up something of the history of the school. It 
was started by the American Home Missionary Association just 
after the war, and occupied some wooden buildings turned over 
to it by the Freedmen's Bureau, situated near the Chattanooga 
depot. Then came the rise of that wonderful enterprise, the Ju- 
bilee Singers. Their history is known to everybody, and need 
not be repeated. They sang the twenty acres and the building 
into existence. Not a dollar was given by the State of Tennessee 
or the city of Nashville. The "nigger singers" did it with their 
throats and lungs. The portraits of the singers adorn the walls 
of the University, as they should. I learned that one of the or- 
iginal company, who studied at the University of Edinburgh, is 
now an evangelist in France, preaching in the French language, 
which he has acquired; another is pursuing his studies at Stras- 
burg; the others are still singing. Three hundred and sixty stu- 
dents have attended the school the past year. They have paid 
for tuition about $8,000. The rest for current expenses is made 
up by Northern subscriptions and by the parent Missionary Soci- 
ety. I could not learn that help from the Feabody fund, or any 
local aid, had been given. 

I listened to several of the recitations. I heard a gentleman 
who might be cut up into aces of spades read Horace; and I 
heard another translate, easily and gracefully, a passage about 
the Scythians, who used wagons as their "wandering homes," 
from which I concluded the Scythians were the original home- 
steaders. Then there was a class in English literature, when a 
young girl gave a very lucid account of Spenser, his life, his po- 
etry, his troubles with the Irish "Land League" of his time, his 
death and burial. The subject of "Arthur and the Table Round " 
coming up, the young person obligingly read for me some lines 
from Tennyson's "Passing of Arthur." After this there was a 
recitation in Moral Philosophy, and, very curiously, the subject 



A BLACK UNIVERSITY. 41 

discussed was the nature of civil government, and what consti- 
tutes a "legitimate" government. The illustration used by the 
author was the late Southern Confederacy, which he declared 
would have been a legitimate government had it succeeded, 
though founded on "a wanton and wicked rebellion." This gave 
rise to a discussion as to how far a good man's conscience would 
permit him to recognize a government so founded, and much 
acuteness was displayed. I may say here that one theory, that 
of the improvement of the negro mind by admixture with the 
white race, utterly broke down in these recitations. Students of 
purest African blood were quite the equals of the others. 

A conversation with the most advanced students developed the 
fact that in their vacations they taught school to help themselves 
through college. Some had taught in Tennessee, others in Georgia. 
Three months appears to be the average year's schooling alforded 
either whites or blacks in the rural districts of these States, by 
State aid. In Tennessee there is provision from the school fund 
and a local school tax; in Georgia there is the school fund and 
the balance is paid by the patrons of the school — by subscription, 
in fact. Both sources do not appear to be sufficient to carry on 
the schools more than three, or at most, four months. I believe 
the most these colored teachers can save from their pay is about 
nineteen dollars a month. This is certainly educating and being 
educated under difficulties. 

Hearing the sound of a piano, we entered one of the music 
rooms, and found the music teacher, a young lady from Vermont, 
instructing what, under the old classification in slave times, would 
be called a " likely brown girl." It so happened that the teacher 
was of the highest Caucasian type of face, with high forehead, 
chiseled features, and clear red-and-white complexion, and the 
contrast was startling. I said when we had left the room, " Will 
these two ever stand together?" and the quiet answer was: "It 
will be a long time first, and perhaps never." 

There seemed to be no disposition on the part of the faculty to 
believe in miracles. There were no stories of remarkable profi- 
ciency; there was no attempt to show off. It was not pretended 
that the students repi-esented the average of the colored people. 



42 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

" These are the best," the President said to me, and he has inves- 
tigated for fourteen years. 

Next to this evident fairness, I admired the consistency and 
courage of these men and women who have devoted themselves to 
this work. Having set out with the doctrine of the social equality 
of the races, they stick to the text. At dinner there was no di- 
vision on the color line, and this is everywhere, I believe, the 
crucial test. The professors sat at different tables. At ours was 
President Cravath, his wife and young daughter, with several stu- 
dents. At the end of the table was a young Louisianian, who 
conversed in French with the young miss. Before the company 
was seated at table, a grace was chanted by all present. It was 
indeed beautiful and impressive to hear from all those voices in 
unison, "Give us this day our daily bread." 

Of course the question came up — it could not be avoided; I 
do not know that it ought to have been — "How are you teachers 
regarded by the community in which you Uve?" The answer 
was given without any trace of passion or resentment, or even 
complaint: "In matters of business, and by men, with perfect 
courtesy ; by the press, with liberality; the institution, as such, is 
regarded with pride by the people of Nashville; but when it 
comes to the social recognition of the ladies connected with the 
school, you arrive at the 'dead-line.'" 

This is the fact. I submit it without any comment. I also 
submit, without any extended remarks, my own conviction that 
the ladies and gentlemen who constitute the faculty of Fisk Uni- 
versity are engaged in the noblest work possible for human be- 
ings. If there is anything better in the way of benevolence or 
good works than helping these young men to a nobler destiny 
than that of whitewashers and field hands, or saving these young 
women from the miserable fate that befalls so many of their race 
and sex in the South ; of helping them on to the fair and open 
place where they shall be the mothers of a happier generation, I 
do not at this moment remember what that better work is. 

They are succeeding. The school is crowded, and through the 
munificence of Mrs. Stone, of Maiden, Mass., another fine build- 
ing is soon to be erected. Fifteen hundred young men and 



A BLACK UNIVERSITY. 43 

women from the institution are now'^scattered over every State in 
the South, mostly engaged in teaching. This is the story, and 
the application is eas)'' enough. 

One fact seems to be very obvious, whether flattering to the 
colored people or not, and that is, that in the matter of education, 
white experience and talent should be brought to bear. The 
system which leaves the colored people to work out their own 
destiny without help, is false in morals and ruinous in practice. 



IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 

Nashville, Tenn., April 21, 1881. 

The notion that the South can be built up only by Northern 
capital and enterprise, is doubtless very gratifying to Northern 
pride, but it is not true as far as Nashville is concerned. The 
leading business men here are Southerners of the purest blood, 
and on inquiry I cannot find that there is any distinctive "North- 
ern element" here. The Northern Methodist Church, which is 
usually indicative of the strength of such an element, if it exists, 
is a very limited organization, and I have even heard doubts if 
there is any such church. What has been done, then, has been 
done by the South ; and this is a fact, it seems to me, which ought 
to be received with gratification. 

From the close of the war until 1870 the town appears to have 
been poor, if not sulky. The millions disbursed here by the Gov- 
ernment and by the army do not appear to have permanently 
enriched anybody. The apparent prosperity caused by the war 
is only an appearance. Its evils are real. In 1870 the "boom" 
began, and is still in progress. In 1870-71, the largest cotton 
crop ever known, 104,000 bales, was marketed here, and build- 
ing, the criterion by which we judge progress in Kansas, is now, 
I think, more active than ever. The town has spread in every 
direction. Edgefield has grown beyond the knowledge of the 
old-timer. The new Nashville has been fairly started. As I have 
said, there are many old familiar features, but the new buildings 
greatly outnumber the old. 

Business in Nashville is scattered over many streets, but Broad 
street is the heart of the city's commerce. The big, plain, un- 
pretentious, and even ugly warehouses, show the varied resources 
of the country. One house displays on its sign: "Cotton, to- 
bacco and wheat;" another, "Wheat and corn;" another, "Cot- 
ton, tobacco and wool." These buildings give no outward 
, (44) 



IX AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 45 

evidence of the wealth piled up iu them. There is no Eastlake 
furniture in the offices ; and the men who control them dress iu 
common clothes and are very quiet in their ways. They indulged 
in no extravagant talk, but seemed confident of the future. The 
city has become one of the great cotton marts of the country. 
Buyers are here from New England and Liverpool. The great 
cotton factory buys its cotton and disposes of its goods here. I 
see nothing to prevent this from being a very wealthy city. 

As to whether the average cotton crop is larger than before 
the war, in short, whether free labor is more productive than 
slave labor, there is of course a dispute. Apparently equally well 
informed men will give directly opposite statements, but at any 
rate the cotton is here. Nashville has much more extensive rail road 
connections than before the war, and is remarkably well situated. 
To the north there is nothing nearer than Louisville; to the west 
than Memphis (and it is said that many Memphis men have re- 
moved here); to the south it is a long way to Mobile, and to the 
east there is no city of prominence. The tobacco of southern 
Kentucky, and of course of northern Tennessee, comes here, and 
the Nashville cotton merchant draws from the fine country in 
northern Alabama and far below there. Up the Cumberland is 
what a Kansas man would call a poor country, yet in the aggre- 
gate it produces a great deal of what might be called "truck." 
I was astonished, on going to the foot of Broad street, to see the 
amount of native lumber piled up. It comes, much of it, from a 
long distance up the river. Ou two or three blocks of Broad 
street you see what there is to " bank on" — cotton, tobacco, corn, 
wheat, hemp, wool ; all that the North has, and more. 

Kansans, accustomed to talk about their own State as the 
"golden belt," may be surprised to learn that Tennessee is a great 
wheat-growing State, and is developing in that direction. Nash- 
ville has several first-class elevators, and six flouring mills, with 
one building of a capacity of four hundred barrels a day, which 
can be increased to twelve hundred. 

The agricultural-implement business is a very safe indication 
of the growth of the country, and it is a great business here. 
Mr. McGavoc showed me through his great store, four stories, 



46 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

each over two hundred feet long, and crowded with wagons and 
machinery. I saw, for the first time, a horse cotton-planter, like 
a corn-planter. It was raanuftietured at Rockford, Illinois. 
Nevertheless, Mr. McGavoc does not tie to cotton entirely. He 
said that his firm had sold, last season, eight thousand bags of 
clover seed. Much of it is raised in Tennessee, and it is sold 
from South Carolina to Arkansas, and south nearly to Mobile. 
This passion for "going to grass" should inspire Senator Ingalls, 
the author of "Blue-Grass," with the liveliest hopes as to the 
restoration, elevation and civilization of the South. But to re- 
turn to the implements. Out on the Lebanon pike, yesterday, I 
saw a black man with a sorry team. There was a sore-backed 
mule, and a horse which seemed nearly transparent, but the load 
consisted, among other things, of the most improved style of 
plows, which he was taking to Smith county. I suppose the time 
will come when the agricultural machinery, etc., will be manu- 
factured in the>South. At present one recognizes the presence of 
the North. The Southern farmer rides in a Studebaker wagou. 

Leaving Broad street and going through College, Market, 
Church, Union and Front streets, in fact over all the portion of 
the city between Broad and the Louisville & Nashville depot, and 
between High street and the river, one sees a crowd of vehicles and 
people. It is the "new South" in a business sense. There seem 
to be no gentlemen of leisure. Except at night, one meets few 
people at theoffice of the Maxwell House, and of those who gather 
there after sunset a great proportion are commercial travelers 
and business men. I do not think I have heard two men sit down 
and talk politics for ten minutes consecutively. When I left 
Atchison, you were all talking about Mahone. I have heard his 
name mentioned but once since I crossed the Ohio. 

All branches of business are largely represented. The dry 
goods establishments are as fine as those of any inland American 
city. The audience that filled the Masonic Theater the other 
night, on the occasion of Miss Mary Anderson's appearance, was 
a very brilliant one. The town wears good clothes, and enjoys 
itself I found one of the finest bookstores I have seen in many 
a day, near the Maxwell House. Conspicuously on sale was 'The 
Fool's Errand." 



IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 4< 

I have remarked the absence of white gentlemen of leisure. 
There are in the business portions of the city, few idlers of any 
sort. Early in the morning you meet large parties of black men 
going to their work, with their dinner buckets, and at evening 
you see them returning. 

That the South would ever be a manufacturing country, I have 
always had doubts. In the slave times it was hardly reasonable 
to expect it, and since the war I have thought it would be difficult 
to secure, first, money, and second, labor. It is useless to talk 
about carrying on cotton-spinning, for instance, with coolies, or any 
variety of foreign or imported laborers. A great manufactory 
should be the product of the soil on which it stands. *It was 
New England labor that made New England a manufacturing 
country. The same is true of old England. In the great por- 
celain works at Worcester, they told me that out of the six hun- 
dred people employed, all but six were born in England. It is 
Germans who make Krupp guns, and so on. The cotton factory 
here, and the great factories at Columbus, Ga., have solved the 
labor question. The factory here is entirely a Nashville enter- 
prise, built with Nashville money. It is a magnificent mill. The 
four hundred horse power engine is, after the Corliss engine at the 
Centennial, the finest I have ever seen. There is no perceptible 
jar, in spite of the great amount of machinery in the building. 
Three hundred hands are employed, all white, except three or four 
laborers employed as roustabouts. The employes, male and fe- 
male, were secured in Nashville. The superintendent of the mill, 
Mr. Kallock, is from Maine. He spells his name differently from 
Rev. Mr. Kalloch, formerly of Maine, and there are other im- 
portant diflTerences. Most of the foremen of the diflferent depart- 
ments are from the North, All the " help " had to be taught, 
many never having seen a cotton mill before, but they have 
learned their business now, and they have $7,000 handed them 
over the counter every monthly pay-day. Of course where one 
mill can thus succeed, others can. 

Cotton is king, after all; if not an absolute monarch as of old, 
still a king. In a music store, I heard a young man say of a 
piece of music, "It makes a man's soul feel like cotton, and lint 



48 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

cotton at that." The compress and the cotton-seed oil manu- 
facture have given the cotton business a great impetus. The 
compress here is doing a fine business. Forty-four compressed 
bales can be loaded in a car, instead of twenty-five, as formerly. 
There are two oil mills here, and both are making money. 

As to matters which many people regard as higher than mere 
money-making, Nashville is peculiarly fortunate. Standing on 
the streets between eight and nine o'clock in the morning, and 
you see the troops of children on their way to schools. There are 
nine very large public school buildings, four of them for colored 
pupils; and eighty teachers are employed, which is very good 
for a city of 43,000 people. The, bevies of young ladies who fill 
the street cars are the pupils at Ward's Seminary. It has two 
hundred pupils, and in the last fourteen years has graduated 
five hundred. 

I have noticed, in a previous letter, Fisk University, but the 
great school here is Vanderbilt University. Why Commodore 
Vanderbilt, who was supposed to have about as much idea of 
philanthropy as a nether millstone, should have founded this 
great institution, is a conundrum. No explanation is offered 
here, except that Commodore Vanderbilt and Bishop McTyeire 
married cousins. Bishop McTyeire is head of the institution, 
which is controlled by the Methodist Church South. The motto 
of the institution appears to be " Everything." The Commodore 
gave, in all, one million dollars. There is a department of phi- 
losophy, science and literature; a biblical or theological de- 
partment; a college of medicine, a school of pharmacy, and a 
dental college. Civil engineering is also made a department. 
The old Nashville Medical College has been merged into Van- 
derbilt University, and is turning out doctors at a great rate. 
Of the six hundred students attending the University, about half 
propose to be doctors. 

Commodore Vanderbilt, of whom Jere Black said that his 
moral and intellectual nature was a "howling wilderness," seems 
to have done a great and good thing for the South. I presume 
that the text-book at Vanderbilt is not Fairchild's Moral Phi- 
losophy, which teaches that the late Rebellion was "wicked and 



IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 49 

wanton," but that question can be left for future ages; and mean- 
while, the cause of general education progresses. 

A mere list of the educational institutions is instructive. I 
have mentioned the public schools, Fisk University, Vanderbilt 
University, and Ward's Seminary. There are also St. Cecilia's 
Academy; the Nashville Institute (Baptist), and the Central 
Tennessee College (Methodist), both devoted to colored students; 
and St. Barnard's Academy. This certainly provides for the 
"higher education." Much the greater number of those who at- 
tend school in the city are educated in the public schools. 

The State of Tennessee has located her charitable institutions 
here, and also the penitentiary, but I have not visited them 
There is a wonderful family resemblance in asylums. 

The United States courts for the middle division of Tennes- 
see are held here, and the Government has erected a building 
here which in Europe would be called a palace. It is not yet 
finished, but will cost not less $400,000. It is designated here as 
the "custom house." The United States court is now in session 
here, with Judge Key, late Postmaster General, on the bench. 
Judge Key looks like an enlarged edition of Col. Benton, of Ef- 
fingham. The time of the court is largely taken up with whisky 
and tobacco cases, and the court room, on the occasion of my 
visit, was full of moonshiners, of the class who take to that sort 
of business. The physique of the mountain man in the South 
never changes. Such as creation's dawn beheld, you see him now. 
There he was, with his long "laigs," as Sut Lovengood calls them, 
his indescribable emaciation of body, his sharp nose and chin, 
his scanty beard and mustache, his long, heavy hair, and his clay- 
colored visage. Butternut, as of yore, is his only wear. In court 
I saw Campbell Morgan, a smooth-shaven, big-boned, foxy-look- 
ing man, who in company with about one hundred and fifty Over- 
ton county moonshiners, held a party of nine revenue officers 
besieged, as my informaat expressed it, " without food or clothes," 
for several days. They could not stick their noses out without 
being fired at. At last, at the intercession of prominent citi- 
zens, Morgan raised the siege and allowed the hungry officers to 
depart. He is now a deputy United States Marshal, and is at- 



50 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

tending court in that capacity. I also saw Capt, Davis, one of 
the most alert and capable officers in the service. He is a large, 
heavy, dark-featured, black-bearded young man, and like most of 
the Marshal's assistants, served in the Confederate army. These 
ex-Confederates served in regular regiments, and not as bush- 
whackers, and are very brave and efficient in the performance of 
their duty. Singularly, the moonshiners where they saw service 
at all, were Union men. They are for the most part very poor 
people, and it is a pity that they are in conflict with the law. 

The newspapers, which should record from day to day all that 
I have said, and more too, are not particularly strong. The 
Louisville Courier -Journal appears to hold the field, to the ex- 
clusion of about everything else in Kentucky and Tennessee. 
Here there is but one morning paper, the American, a well-con- 
ducted journal. It is conservative, and does not dine on com 
bustibles of any sort. I believe the other papers call it a 
Republican paper — which it is not. 

About the most satisfactory conversation I have had, so far, 
was with a leading clergyman of this city. A Pennsylvanian by 
birth, he had come South when a young man, married, remained 
through all the evil days of the Confederacy, and is now preach- 
ing to a congregation of six hundred, having started in with 
thirty members. He said that the Southern people were slow 
and rather lazy, but he thought they had done very well. When 
he came to Nashville, after the war, there was not a fence within 
ninety miles. I could see for myself what had been done since. 
He and others built their houses on what was a Government 
stable-lot and corral. He said a wave of sentiment was sweeping 
over the South from the North; not a political wave, but a busi- 
ness wave. The Northern idea of business, of money-making, 
was taking hold of the people. He thought political discussions 
were conducted with much more heat in Illinois than in Ten- 
nessee. If a man wanted to live where little interest was felt in 
politics, Tennessee was the place for him. The Northern people, 
he thought, remembered more about the war than the Southern 
people. He had visited Kansas, and he thought Tennessee the 
better State. This was very different from the style of talk we 



IN AND AROUND NASHVILLE. 51 

used to bear a few years ago, about tbe "down- trodden, robbed 
and impoverished South," and I was very glad to hear it. 

Pollard, in the closing chapter of his "Lost Cause," the most 
readable book about the war produced by the South, urges the 
people of the South to remain as they were at the close of the 
war; not to desire a material prosperity like that of the North, 
or to work for it, but to maintain in dignity and poverty the old 
South. Nashville has failed to recognize Mr. Pollard, and has 
prospered. Nashville has respectfully declined to be sacrificed 
to tradition. What she has done I have tried to set forth in out- 
line, and I am sure no Northern man but will rejoice to hear this 
story of progress. 



THE OLD WAR TRAIL. 

Chattanooga, Tenn., April 23, 1881. 

Before bidding good-bye to Nashville, in company with an old 
army friend I made a pilgrimage to the Hermitage. However 
elevated the moral worth of the two travelers, there was nothing 
sufficiently gorgeous in the array to violently stir up the pop- 
ulace along the road. The pilgrimage was made in an express 
wagon, with a colored gentleman, the driver and proprietor, on 
the box. 

The old Lebanon pike was found in good order, with the toll 
gates in their old locations. I doubt if there is a pleasanter old 
road in America. It was a soft, hazy day, a sort of combina- 
tion of all the seasons save winter. It looked like spring, was 
as warm as summer, and had the smoky horizon of autumn. 
The road is lined with large farms (plantations was the old 
name), with stately "manor houses" with Greek porticoes in 
front, and enormous oaks and elms all about. Good, old- 
fashioned houses these, built when each family was large in 
itself, and was, besides, visited by a great host of relatives. The 
fences were in good repair; the newer ones being constructed of 
a flat barbed wire. Black people were in the fields ; one large 
party was setting out a nursery; others were sowing plaster of 
Paris broadcast; many were plowing. The white men were also 
engaged. One was overseeing the nursery operations, and others 
were going fishing. We passed through a wayside shady village, 
where the store and other buildings were being held up by men 
leaning against them. The hamlet is known as Slip-Up. 

It is a long eleven miles from Nashville to the point where 
you leave the pike and turn off down a sort of woods road to 
the Hermitage. This traveled a quarter of a mile, we came 
upon a brick house almost hidden from view by a growth of 
cedars. This was once the home of Andrew Jackson, and here 
he is buried. 

(52) 



THE OLD WAR TRAIL. 53 

We turned around the corner of a mouldy board fence which 
inclosed the cedars, and moved up a rough lane to the side of 
the house. There was no stir about; only an enormous turkey 
stepped across the lane, and a young calf came out of the cedars 
and looked through the fence with the curiosity of youth. No 
human being was visible. 

General Jackson built what was, for his time, a stylish house. 
He seems to have had some idea of Mount Vernon. There is a 
large two-story brick house, and on each side one-story wings, 
one used, in the General's time, as an office, and the other as a 
long dining room, adjoining the parlor. A lofty two-story porch, 
with high wooden pillars of au uncertain order of architecture, 
graced the front and also the back of the main building. The 
windows of the parlor were open. We stood on the stone-floored 
porch and rang the bell. No one answered, and a journey around 
to the back of the house resulted in the discovery of a bouncing 
yellow girl, who explained that she could show the house in the 
absence of her grandma, who was sick. So we all went into the 
parlor, which is just as Gen. Jackson left it. It is a stiff, gloomy 
sort of room. The brocade-covered chairs, magnificent in Jack- 
son's time, looked fit to break any modern back. Then there 
were the old-fashioned horse-hair chairs, which are twice as fu- 
nereal as a hearse There was a quaint little old piano, made by 
Gilbert, of Boston, and bought by Gen. Jackson. It was about 
half the size of a Steinway, and its yellowed ivory keys gave a 
shrill, crackling sound, like an old woman's voice; yet, how many 
fair fingers have swept over those keys, when the old General, 
broken by age and illness, got out his hymn book {hime book, he 
called it), and had the young ladies sing. There were portraits 
of Gen. Jackson, and a frigid marble bust. Healey's picture, 
painted a short time before Gen. Jackson's death, is the finest. I 
never saw age and pain more faithfully depicted. There were 
various rejics and curiosities, mostly locked up in a glass case. 
One lay outside, a British bayonet, picked up on the battle-field 
of New Orleans, around which the root of a tree had grown, 
making it a very peaceful-looking bayonet. 

This parlor did not seem much like Jackson, and we walked 
4 



54 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

around the sunken, moss-grown brick walks, and noticed the gen- 
eral air of decay about the place. The State of Tennessee issued 
bonds to buy it, and whether the bonds should be paid is what the 
State Credit and Low Tax parties have been quarreling about. 
At present it remains in the Jackson family, a son of Gen. Jack- 
son's adopted son occupying the place. Between him and the 
State, the house may yet tumble down. 

Going out to the garden, we saw an aged black woman ap- 
proaching. She was so old that her original black color had 
faded into an ashy hue. The old lady joined us in the large 
garden, first laid out, as she informed us, by the artist. Earl, but 
now sadly dilapidated. There were ragged shrubs, and neg- 
lected flowers; it made one think of Goldsmith's "blossoming 
furze, unprofitably gay." Under a little circular temple of 
stone lie the remains of General Andrew Jackson, beside his 
wife Rachael. The long and often-printed inscription over the 
dead wife, told much of her husband's life and nature. I pre- 
sume had I been a voter in Jackson's time, I should have taken 
great satisfaction in voting against him, and should have de- 
nounced him as an ignorant, violent, overbearing, horse-racing, 
dueling old tyrant, as was the fashion that then prevailed; but 
seeiug the two graves, and reading the lines over the woman he 
loved so faithfully and so long, it was impossible to remain in 
arms against his memory. "A being so gentle and yet so virtu- 
ous, slander might wound but could not dishonor," says the 
inscription. It was to avenge words against her that Jackson, 
himself wounded, yet unflinching, shot down Charles Dickinson 
in one of the most ferocious duels recorded in history. 

The old servant who lived at the Hermitage the last four 
years of Gen. Jackson's life, told, as she had done a thousand 
times, the story of his waning days. It was an oft-repeated tale, 
yet as told it touched me more than any printed page. 

There are no buildings about the Hermitage save some houses 
occupied by renters and servants, mostly cabins; and in a grove 
near the turnpike is an old-fashioned country church — a square, 
ugly edifice of dull-colored brick, with a large chimney but no 
tower. The church was built by Jackson, and it is connected 



THE OLD WAR TRAII>. 55 

with all his later history. Suffering constantly, utterly broken 
in body, the old man walked up and down the avenue of cedars 
he had set out, and thought of the world beyond. In that 
church he professed his belief in "the Friend who would keep 
him to the end." The old servant described him as the friend 
of every child he met; the kindest of masters; surrounded by 
young company; glad to have the young ladies sing to him the 
hymns he had marked in the old leather-covered book. When 
the word came to the church, one Sunday, that he was dying, 
the entire congregation flocked to the Hermitage. The black 
people, too, came to the " big house," and thronged into his 
room, one that looks out on the lower front piazza. They would 
have sent them away, but the dying General, issuing his last 
order, said, " No, let them stay. God is no respecter of persons." 

This is what the old woman saw. It is known to others that, 
though tortured and weak, the old man to the last kept his eye 
on the political horizon, though no longer for himself I have 
myself seen, in Kansas, a letter written by him two months before 
his death, in which, speaking of Polk's Cabinet, he said: "Mr. 
Buchanan would make an able Secretary of State, but he lacks 
moral courage." 

The Hermitage was left to darkness and silence, and after an- 
other day in Nashville, I started southward over the old railroad, 
the Nashville & Chattanooga, the old war trail, every inch of 
which was fought for in the great struggle, and so famous it be- 
came that the name of every little station on it was spoken of and 
known at the ends of the world. 

Through the cedar brakes and across Stone river to Murfrees- 
boro. The old line of defenses was passed, just as good as ever. 
The town has improved some, but looked dark after the rain of 
the night before. Christiana, a little station where the houses 
stand on posts. Fosterville, and a line of conical wood hills, the 
outposts of the Cumberland Mountains, rose up as if to bar the 
way. Wartrace, old name, but looking thrifty with new cot- 
tages and a new church. Normandy, and the south end of the 
car began to be the highest; we had begun to climb to the plateau, 
and there were lofty hills on either hand. Tullahoma; here we 



56 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

were on the high plain. A smart-looking place, with nothing 
but a growth of young oaks all about it, as if the old timber had 
been cut down for camp fires. I remember one night, at the 
old Nashville Theater, the thunder that rolled over the house 
when it was announced, in a song from the stage, that "we" were 
in Tullahoma. Then came Cowan, and a new iron furnace, and 
a railroad winding like a snake up the mountains to a bare spot 
visible a long distance, where is located the University of the 
South, and beyond the objective point of the road, the great 
Sewanee coal mines. 

The day was perfect, and the mountain-sides were gray and 
bronze and emerald with the changes of the coming leaves. It 
was all loftiness, verdure and sunshine, with a sky like dissolving 
pearls. In and out among the mountains swept the swift train, 
down all the time now, and then crossed the State line and entered 
Alabama; came out in a level red-clay country, and here was 
Stevenson, at the junction of the Nashville & Chattanooga and 
Memphis & Charleston Railroads, and just as shabby as when I saw 
it last. The row of dirty-faced houses under the bluff, staring 
like loafers at the railroad track, and the old fields and even some 
intrenchments were still there. One man had built his house in 
a redoubt, and used the breast-works for a fence. The former 
law oflBce of Hon. W. C. Webb, now of Topeka, Kansas, was 
probably in sight, but I could not distinguish it. The Judge had 
departed, and left "no sign." 

Low, swampy woods, a branch railroad striking out for Jasper, 
and then the great mountain wall south of the Tennessee rose 
before us, and we slowly ran into Bridgeport. I was looking up 
at the ridge at the left of the road, at a little red line of heaped 
earth, an old relic of the war, and some growing peach trees, and 
thinking of a dreadful explosion I once witnessed there, and had 
quite forgotten everything else, when the train slowly moved out 
on the bridge, and what a sight burst upon my vision ! Here was 
the smooth, brown, gliding flood of the Tennessee, coming forth 
from its rocky portal. Looking up the stream you see the pur- 
ple mountains, line on line, stretching on every hand; mountains 
to the right and to the left, one behind the other, bathed in the 



THE OLD WAR TRAIL. 57 

sunshine. Just at their foot rose a column of black smoke from 
the furnaces at New Pittsburg. A steamboat taking the chute 
back of the island, drifted slowly, the smoke lazily floating from 
her chimneys toward the bridge. Then we were over. A short 
distance from Bridgeport we passed out of Alabama, and again 
ran into Tennessee. The country grew wilder; the railroad 
seemed hunting its way; ever and anon it sought the river, then 
climbed back into the hills; now up, now down; past Shell 
Mound and Whiteside, over the spider-web bridge at Running 
Water; then we saw high above us the long gray wall of a moun- 
tain we had seen before; then a green valley at its feet; a run 
along a narrow shelf between the cliff and the river, past the 
mouth of a cave; then we saw the long slope of Lookout Moun- 
tain, with the great rock looking down ; a cloud of smoke rose 
before us from the town. We were at one of the famous pre- 
cincts of the world. Here was Lookout, Mission Ridge, and 
Chattanooga. 



/in and around CHATTANOOGA. 



Chattanooga, Tenn., April 24, 1881. 

It is fortunate that the writer of this letter is not the discoverer 
of Chattanooga, endeavoring to give the world a first description, 
for the town is so beset by ridges, ranges, spurs, knobs and " coves," 
in the way of mountain scenery, and so involved are the tortuous 
windings of the Tennessee, that nothing but a map can convey an 
idea to the non-beholder. In this letter it will be taken for 
granted that the reader has " been there," and an attempt will be 
made to bring, in a general way, to the mind of the ex-soldier, 
the changes which have occurred since he departed. 

To begin with, it is necessary to understand that Chattanooga 
has grown to be a city of fifteen thousand people, and has far 
outgrown the lines erected for its defense, and the reader should 
bear in mind that the boy baby, born in the days of Lookout 
Mountain and Missionary Ridge, is now about ready to enter the 
field with a moustache, and is laying vigorous siege to the young 
lady who made her appearance in this bothersome world at that 
period. 

On the evening of my arrival here, in company with a former 
officer of the Seventy-eighth Pennsylvania, who took part in the 
operations in and about Chattanooga, I visited some of the impor- 
tant localities. Our first visit was to the National Cemetery, 
which lies between the city and Orchard Knob. This cemetery, 
though not naturally as beautiful as many of the sites selected by 
the Government, is carefully watched and tended, and in time 
art will change what was once a gravelly knoll covered partially 
with cedars, into a charming park. On the highest ground is an 
observatory, with brick pillars and a sodded floor, at present roof- 
less, from which the gazer can see, on one side the city, on the 
other Missionary Ridge — the present and the past ; while Lookout, 
which you can never escape iu Chattanooga, lifts its great form 

against the sky. 

(58) 



IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. 59 

The cemetery is the resting-place of thousands. It makes 
one's heart ache to think of how many. And in the record the 
Eighth Kansas fills a sadly large portion of a full page. I vis- 
ited the graves of Captains Trego and Graham, who have their 
real monuments in two Kansas counties, named in their honor. 
They are buried side by side, not far from the entrance to the cem- 
etery, in the midst of an open circle. In common with the others, 
:he inscriptions above them give only their names, rank and State, 
3Ut the rest will be remembered. It has seemed to me, however, 
that in each of the counties named after the dead soldiers of Kan- 
sas there should be some permanent memorial; a portrait or bust, 
or some mural tablet in a public place or building in the county, 
to preserve the memory of the brave. Already there have been 
questions as to the real origin of some Kansas county names, and 
such questions should be settled forever. 

The cemetery is laid out in drives, one of them passing Tjy a 
natural cave which is used as a vault. There are few conspicu- 
ous monuments in the cemetery, but, wanting such tokens, (which 
semetimes seem to savor of the pride of the living rather than 
respect for the dead,) love and patriotism still remember the 
sacred place. The visitors' book bore thousands of names from 
every Northern and many Southern States. They come here 
singly and in excursion parties, and the people here tell me that 
scarcely a day goes by but some solitary man looks curiously 
about him for traces of former years, and questions the passers- 
by, saying: "I have not been here since the war;" and a genera- 
tion will pass away before men will cease to be led here by 
sentiment alone — that stirring in the heart which leads us to 
long journeying to visit once more the scenes of long-ago gayety 
or grief, of glory or defeat. 

From the cemetery we went to Orchard Knob, famous as the 
point of observation for the leading commanders during the bat- 
tle of Missionary Ridge. I am told that this hill was once actu- 
ally selected as a site for a fruit orchard, but no traces of it re- 
main. It is now a rocky eminence, rising like a wave in the 
plain that stretches toward the foot of Missionary Ridge. It is 
densely covered with a growth of cedars, and running across its 



60 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

crest is what seems a hurriedly-constructed line of works; two 
lines, in fact, are still visible. As there is no soil to speak of, the 
breastworks are constructed of loose, broken rocks, and the work 
of raising them must have been very laborious. In spite of the 
cedars, Missionary Ridge is plainly visible. The slope of the 
Ridge directly opposite Orchard Knob is now cleared ground to 
the crest. In fact, the Chattanooga side of the Ridge has been 
greatly changed in places. Where there were old fields, a growth 
of young timber has sprung up, and in other places the timber 
has been cleared away, and there are fields and orchards. A part 
of the ground swept over by our advance is now a flourishing 
young peach orchard of two hundred acres. There is little tim- 
ber between the town and the Ridge, except a young growth of 
oaks which has sprung up since the "troubles." 

We returned from Orchard Knob to the city by way of old 
Fort Wood, afterward called Fort Creighton. It is still a strong 
work, and is the property of the Dupont Powder Company, which 
used it for some time as a magazine. 

The present appearance of things may be very briefly summed 
up. The forts, which cost the army so much labor, were built of 
an article of red clay which has been found very useful for street 
and brick- making purposes. Thousands of cart-loads have been 
used in grading the streets of Chattanooga, and brickyards have 
been established near some of the old works. They have been 
mixed, moulded and burned, and are now in substantial build- 
ings all over the city. I find but very few of the old landmarks- 

Directly to the west of the town will be remembered the high 
eminence somewhat resembling Lookout in shape, and now called 
Cameron Hill. It terminates in an abrupt descent at the river. 
Formerly it was covered with a close growth of cedars, but the 
east, or town slope, is now bare. The vivid green of the grass 
and the intersecting gullies, which at a distance might be taken 
for hedges, remind one of the high hills of Ireland. On this 
height our signal corps was established, and also a battery of very 
heavy Parrott guns. Roads were constructed which are still in 
use, and traces of the old parapets are still visible from the town. 
The lower eastern slope is covered with some of the most tasteful 



IN AND AROrND CHATTANOOGA. 61 

residences in Chattanooga, surrounded by lovely grounds. The 
residences are climbing the slope, and one of the highest is the 
house of Mr. John Stivers, a cousin of our Tom. Cameron Hill 
is a favorite resort for the loungers of Chattanooga. 

Descending to the foot of Market street, there are traces of 
old lines along the river, and then houses intervene until you 
come to Fort Wood, which I have mentioned. On the next rise 
there stood a work, the name of which I have forgotten, but it 
has entirely disappeared, and the site is occupied by a stately 
private residence and gardens. Fort Negley (later Fort Phelps) 
is rapidly being converted into brick. lu a little while it will 
have disappeared. The large brick house occupied by Col. 
Martin as headquarters is still standing, and is the property of 
the Lookout Rolling Mill Company, which occupies the adjoin- 
ing grounds. It is on what is now Whiteside street, and there 
are houses for half a mile beyond it. 

To go back to the fortifications. There are traces of a covered 
way between the fort I have spoken of as having disappeared en- 
tirely, and Fort Negley. On the line nearer Lookout, no large 
works are visible, nor do you see anything of importance, till, 
swinging around to the foot of Cameron Hill again, you come to 
Fort Mihalozy, still in good order. In traveling about the open 
spaces and commons of the town, you come upon fragments of 
ditches and parapets, and there are traces in the interior of the 
city of a very elaborate work built on a sort of cliff, and known 
as Fort Jones. Out in the oak brush, between the city and Mis- 
sionary Ridge, may be found the front line of Confederate de- 
fenses. The works in most cases appear much less elaborate and 
well preserved than our own. The elegant court house in Chatta- 
nooga is said to occupy the site of a former field work. 

In company with Col. McGowen, of the Chattanooga Times, 
I started out in search of the camping-place of the First Brig- 
ade, Second Division, Fourteenth Array Corps, near Rossville, 
from whence it started on what resulted in the long march to 
the sea. We went out a good road constructed by county con- 
vict labor, until we reached the former home of the Cherokee 
family of Ross. On the road we met the old-timers coming in. 



62 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

Lookout will become a blooming prairie before the "pore" white 
man of northern Georgia changes. Here they were, the same 
gay old cavalcade, the lank, narrow-skirted old woman with her 
snufFstick in her mouth; the same grief and famine-stricken 
mule, tied up with rope "gears" with a sway-backed white 
horse; the same weather-beaten wagon. Nothing had changed, 
not even to the bundle of blade fodder in the wagon for the 
"critters'" dinner. 

We left the road and passed through the gap in the Ridge, but 
where I expected to find open fields all was covered with young 
pines twenty feet high, and I gave up the search. I learned, 
however, that a portion of the ground is still in cultivation. 
Giving up this trail, we skir^ along the foot of the western 
slope of the Ridge, seeking a road to the crest. The road lost 
itself in the woods, but finally, by letting down bars and pass- 
ing through cultivated ground, we came out at the summit, some 
distance south of Bragg's former headquarters. Here was a 
neat farm house, with a vineyard, strawberry beds, and a mar- 
ket garden. The proprietor, Mr. Carpenter, came out. I soon 
learned that he came from Ohio here; was a born New Eng- 
lander, and had learned his trade in Springfield, Vermont, a vil- 
lage I knew very well in my boyhood, and here he was plow- 
ing and sowing on this once blood-stained height. It was a 
delicious day. Before us lay like a map the plain aud town ; the 
smoke of the iron mills rolled away to the south; beneath its 
cloud we knew was heard the roar of the fires; the hoarse 
'scaping of steam ; the ringing of iron upon iron; the hundreds 
of sounds of peaceful industry. And Lookout, changeless in 
war or peace, ever the same in its gray majesty, while genera- 
tions of men about its foot are born and live, and laugh and 
weep and die, looked down upon it all. Here surely there had 
never been any stain upon the earth darker than the falling 
petals of the peach bloom or the strawberry's snowy blossom. 
But even as this thought came, the gardener led me aside, and 
removing the covering of a box showed me the mouldering bones 
of a human being; the remains of some lost and forgotten sol- 
dier he had just found mingled with the soil of his vineyard. 



IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. b-i 

With what army he fought, for what cause he died, nothing 
could be known. The corroding earth had obliterated all. Not 
a button remained. If a Union soldier, in all the search he had 
been lost. If a Confederate, he had not been missed. He had 
joined the array of the "unknown," forgotten by all save those 
who perhaps listened for months for his unreturning feet; for- 
gotten by all save those and God, who we would fain hope knows 
and cares at last for all. 

I was glad to turn away and speak to Mr. Carpenter of other 
things. He told me that his neighbors for a mile along the 
Ridge were Northern men, from Pennsylvania and Ohio, engaged 
like himself in fruit-growing and gardening. The Northerners 
still hold Missionary Ridge. The eastern slope, which is much 
less rugged than the western, was for some distance in cultivation 
to the foot. The soil looked yellow and poor to a Kansas man, 
but I am assured that it is productive. I was told that Northern 
men were quite successful in this sort of business, where the na- 
tive "cracker" sinks into the most worthless of created beings. 

If there is anything in the influence of natural scenery on the 
heart and mind, these dwellers on the Ridge are most fortunate, 
for to the west they have one of the noblest prospects on earth, 
while to the east range on range of hills, varying in color as they 
recede, from green to purple, stretch away, to terminate finally 
in the Kenesaw mountains. 

This is about all there is to say of the Chattanooga of the 
past. The Chattanooga of the present is the most interesting 
town I have seen in the South. A gentleman who has been in 
both places says it resembles Atchison, and in some respects the 
comparison is not a bad one. The population is divided in birth 
and in political sentiment, and the result, instead of being dis- 
sension, is unity. Here are Confederate and Union soldiers; cit- 
izens of both parties. Colonel McGowen, who edits a Democratic 
paper here, came as the commander of a colored regiment, and I 
presume there are changes in the other direction. Then there are 
State-Credit Democrats and State-Credit Republicans, and Low- 
Tax men of both parties, forced to some extent to act together. 
But the great tie that binds men together is business, and Chatta- 



64 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

nooga is a business town. Market street is as wide as Kansas 
avenue, in Topeka, and as busy as Commercial street, in Atchison, 
and is twice as long as the latter street. Chattanooga is a great 
manufacturing town — greater than we of the North suppose. Id 
fact, while we have been speaking of the South only as a political 
stamping-ground, a great industrial revolution has been going on, 
at least in portions of that country. We know all about the Ku- 
Klux and the White-Liners, but we have not heard about the 
mines and the foundries, the factories and the rolling-mills. 
Chattanooga is dotted all over now with the fortifications of in- 
dustry, as she once was with those of war. I devoted a good 
many hours to the task, and then did not see half that I wished. 
At the river bank there is the extensive furniture factory and 
saw-mills of Loomis & Hart, both Northern men. They use a great 
amount of native lumber from up the Tennessee. The revival 
in this trade is wonderful. One New York party has 500,000 feet 
of black walnut lying in the river just above Chattanooga. Over 
in the narrow valley between Cameron Hill and the river, the 
ground was covered for many acres. There is the Roane Iron 
Works, owned principally by Cleveland capitalists, employing 
550 men at Chattanooga, and as many more in Roane county, at 
their mines and mills. These works are the outgrowth of a rail 
mill started by the Government in 1865. Then there is next an 
extensive manufacture of tile drain pipe, owned by Montague & 
Co. A few yards further on is one of the largest tanneries in the 
United States, that of J. B. Hoyt & Co., of Boston, manufac- 
turers of sole leather and belting. The great belt that ran the 
machinery at the Centennial exhibition was made by this firm. 
Three hundred and twenty hides a day are handled here, and 120 
men are employed. Then there is a large blast furnace owned 
by J. C. Warner & Co., of Nashville; and then, going out into 
the open plain stretching to Lookout, are the Wasson car works, 
employing 200 men, and manufacturing box and flat cars, in- 
cluding the wheels. All these works draw their raw material 
from the surrounding country. The iron ore is dug out of the 
Tennessee mountains; the clay for the tile comes from Birming- 
ham, Alabama; the thousands of cords of oak bark are gathered 



IX AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. ()d 

iu Tennessee and northern Alabama and Georgia; the lumber 
for the ear works and the furniture factory is floated down the 
Tennessee. The coal used is a home production, and coke fur- 
naces are being built all over the country. It is such things as 
these that people talk about in Chattanooga. Besides these 
works, there is the Lookout nail works, and under the shadow of 
the mountain the Vulcan nail works. Then we have the cotton 
factory; the extensive machine shops of Gen. John T. Wilder, 
formerly commander of our mounted infantry brigade, now post- 
master at Chattanooga, and one of the pioneers of the modern 
iron industry. There are flouring mills; an ice factory; an es- 
tablishment for making gas pipes, and many more. All the 
works I visited employ both black and white labor; the laborers 
being also a home production. Chattanooga is the center of a 
great coal and iron business. At Rising Fawn, J. C. Warner & 
Co. have immense works, and at South Pittsburg, on the river 
between Chattanooga and Bridgeport, an English company has 
invested $1,500,000. 

This, to moralize a little, shows what can be done in the South 
by a union of forces. At Chattanooga, Northern money and mind 
and Southern money, muscle and mind, have made a combi- 
nation, and the result is something to be proud of In a letter 
from Nashville, I gave full credit for what has been done by 
Southern enterprise; but at Chattanooga, both Northern and 
Southern men have worked together, and I am free to say that I 
like that better. 

I have no time to speak of the wonderful railroad system of 
Chattanooga. I noticed one thing, however, that the Southern 
roads are adopting the Northern system of advertising. Future 
Fangborns and Charley Gleeds will find employment in the South, 
and will do what has been so well done for and by the Santa Fe 
road in Kansas and Colorado. 

I cannot close this letter without saying a word about Lookout. 
You cannot get away from the sight of it at Chattanooga; it is 
impossible, almost, not to visit it, I had stood on the "Point" 
years ago, and to see that incomparable spectacle of river, valley, 
rock and mountain once, is never to forget it. Still I could not 



66 SOUTHEEN LETTERS. 

resist the temptation to visit the mountain again, and starting 
between showers, made the ascent on horseback. It rained at 
intervals all the way, but one forgot the rain in such a journey 
up and up the winding St. Elmo road, now wrapped in mist, now 
catching glimpses of the valley through the parting curtains of 
the storm ; listening to the sighing of the wind in the pine-tops, 
and the voice of the mountain stream that "slips through moss- 
grown stones with endless laughter." On arriving at the crest I 
rode over to Rock City, that curious cjllection of Nature's freaks 
in fancy stone work, and then finally, drenched, tired and hungry, 
I came back to the Natural Bridge Hotel, near the St. Elmo road. 
Here I was "hospitably entreated," had an excellent dinner, 
looked at the natural bridge, and just as the sky showed some 
signs of clearing, started back to Chattanooga. 

It is to be regretted that, over such a beautiful place as Look- 
out Mountain, there should rest a shadow of greed and extortion, 
such as has deterred thousands of people from visiting Niagara 
Falls. The heritage of the Cherokees was divided by lottery, a 
considerable tract on Lookout Mountain, including the Point, 
being drawn by a family named Martin. The Martins left the 
country, and the property fell into the hands of Col. Whiteside, 
who bought it in for a trifle. It is now in the hands of his widow 
and other heirs. The mountain had been a sort of free summer 
resort for thirty years, and it was not until the yellow fever sum- 
mer that the Whiteside heirs bethought themselves to extort 
money from the public. A crowd, of terrified people sought the 
mountain for safety from the scourge, and so the house of White- 
side established a toll-gate on the old road, and commenced a 
regular system of exaction. The people of Chattanoogk were 
greatly angered and disgusted at this, and a company built the 
St. Elmo road up the mountain, an excellent highway, and des- 
titute of the ornament of toll-gates. The Whitesides attempted 
to enjoin this enterprise, but without success. They have now 
even built a fence across the Point, put up toll-gates, and actu- 
ally refuse access to visitors who come up the mountain with 
teams hired at other livery stables than their own. A spot 
which really ought to be the property of the United States is 



IN AND AROUND CHATTANOOGA. 67 

now fenced in and toll-gated, and surrounded by vexatious re- 
strictions. A considerable number of law suits have been brought, 
with, so far, no relief to the public. I write thus, first, to pre- 
pare the visitor for what he may expect; and second, to relieve 
the people of Chattanooga from any suspicion of complicity in 
this meanness. 

Notwithstanding all this. Lookout Mountain, with its natural 
features and its historic associations, it is a pleasure, almost a 
duty, to visit. There are a thousand things to see, and the old 
soldier especially finds traces of the work of the most stirring 
years of his life, which awaken emotions which he alone can feel. 
Near the Rock City I found ten lines of rude stone chimneys, 
which marked the old camping-place of a regiment. The visitor 
who desires to learn the history of this region will find a bright 
chronicler in Mrs. Thomas, of the Natural Bridge Hotel, who was 
born at Rossville, almost in the evening shadow of the mountain, 
the daughter of the pioneer surveyor of this region in the days 
when the Cherokee turned his sad face to the westward. With 
the hope that every wandering Kansan visiting Chattanooga may 
find there the same gay welcome and free-handed hospitality 
that the writer did, he says good-bye. 



THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL. 

Knoxville, Tenn., April 26, 1881. 

Probably no other town in the South so endeared itself to the 
loyal people of the North during the war a>* Knoxville. The 
names of Brownlow and Knoxville, and of East Tennessee, ac- 
quired in those days an imperishable fame. Strangely, how- 
ever, the strongest Union town in the South was occupied until 
the war was half over by the Confederates. Thousands of brave 
Tennesseeans were in arms for the Union, yet for a long time 
they saw the chief city of their mountains beyond their grasp. 
At last it was occupied by the Union troops without a struggle; 
then was the object of a fierce and desperate, though unsuccess- 
ful, struggle to take it, occasioning the severest march ever made 
by our troops during the war, for its relief; and then the cloud 
of war rolled away from it, it is to be hoped forever. It was for 
history's sake that your correspondent went to Knoxville. 

The town, seen of a showery morning, has an ancient but not 
a decayed look. It is a green old age, like Adam's in "As You 
Like It," "frosty but kindly." The brick greatly used in the 
buildings look as if smoke had been mixed with the clay ; not 
soot, you will understand, but smoke. The impression of an- 
tiquity is conveyed by the number of churches having church- 
yards attached, after the fashion of the old countries. Then the 
substantial houses that have sheltered three generations of the 
same families, are shaded with trees as old ; and there are more 
old-fashioned flowers, as dandelions and lilacs, in Knoxville than 
anywhere else this side of the Hudson, 

The earliest settlers were, I believe, Presbyterians from North 
Carolina; and that church is still powerful in the town. It was 
named after a New Englander, Gen. Henry Knox, of Maine, the 
artillerist of the Revolution, and has a flavor of Yankee in its 
ancient composition. Every alternate fine house in the town 
seems to belong to a Cowan or a McClung, and the Cowans are 
(68) 



THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL. 69 

of Yankee origin. One of the rich men of the town started in as 
a working carpenter from Connecticut. Horace Maynard came 
down from Massachusetts and went into politics, in which pur- 
suit the Lord has blessed him, and he has also been able to retain 
the respect and affection of his fellow-townsmen in all his office- 
holding years. 

Knoxville was once the capital of Tennessee. It has always 
been the capital of East Tennessee. In the old court house at 
Knoxville all the eminent orators of East Tennessee have begun 
and usually closed their oratorical careers. The old court house 
itself is a type of Knoxville. It is probably about fifty years 
old, but is so stoutly built that it would smile at a Kansas cy- 
clone. It is rusty rather than venerable, at present. A trace of 
former magnificence is seen in each of the offices, in the shape of 
a magnificent horse-hair-covered sofa. I should think a whole 
jury could sit on one of them. There are preserved in the ar- 
chives old records bound in parchment. I looked over the record 
in the first murder case tried in the county — Abongphigo, a 
Creek Indian, charged with killing John Ish, a white man. Mr. 
A, was found guilty on the 1st of August, and hung on the 4th. 
A marginal note on the record says that a son of Ish stated that 
his father was killed by another Indian, but that the Creeks de- 
livered up Abongphigo to be hung, because he was halfwitted 
and of not much account anyhow. The poor fellow should have 
lived till our day, and it would have gone hard if we had not 
got him off, not so much on the ground that he was innocent, 
that not being material, but that he was crazy, and also that he 
committed the act in self-defense. 

Knoxville is built on more hills than Rome, and as the mount- 
ains are round about Jerusalem, so they are even more round 
about Knoxville. Standing on the roof of the Government 
building, the town seems shut in by rows on rows of hills, and 
beyond these, mountains. To the east may be seen the Smoky 
Mountains, first a low range known as Rattlesnake Bluff, and be- 
yond that the great boundary of Tennessee and North Carolina. 
These are true mountains; the blue outline not being long and 
straight, the edge of a plateau, like the Cumberland range, but 



70 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

with the waving lines and sharp summits which we associate with 
"the purple peaks that tear the drifting skies of gold." Then 
there are more elevations to the north; and west, through a gap, 
are seen the Cumberland Mountains; and south, hills upon hills. 
Through these hills, past the gates of Knoxville, runs what has 
been for two years past legally and officially the Tennessee, but 
formerly the Holston river. 

In company with Mr. E. W. Adkins, Circuit Court Clerk, 
whose acquaintance I made when he was Quartermaster-Sergeant 
of the Third Tennessee Union volunteers, I walked and rode 
over all the hills of Knoxville, and it must be understood that 
they are not crags, like those at Kansas City, but real, easy, up- 
and-down hills of red clay, ameliorated by macadam. The one 
fine public edifice of the town is the United States building, of 
white Tennessee marble, quarried a few miles from town. This 
house cost $375,000. With this and a $400,000 custom house at 
Nashville, it must be confessed that Colonel Sellers's "old flag 
and an appropriation " has been a good thing for Tennessee. This 
building is the only one in which I saw this beautiful material 
extensively used, although East Tennessee has more marble than 
all the isles of Greece. 

The town has made a start in manufactures. They make iron 
and ice, and perhaps other things. There are water mills scat- 
tered around in the hollows, with none of your fancy turbine ar- 
rangements, but with the old overshot wheels, that go round and 
round in the plashing water. Water, by the way, is a big thing 
in this mountain country. There are "branches," creeks, rivers 
and springs innumerable, including all the dirty-tasting waters 
which have been pronounced medicinal, enough to set up a hun- 
dred Saratogas. A man from this region, in hunting a new coun- 
try, never inquires about the soil or climate, but only about the 
water. This led Bob Ingersoll to observe that Dives was prob- 
ably an East Tennesseean or North Carolinian. 

There are educational institutions in profusion. On a high, 
smooth green hill, stand scattered brick blocks of surpassing ug- 
liness. This is the agricultural, military and scientific University 
of Tennessee; then there is a new colored college in the suburbs; 



THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL. 71 

a young ladies' seminary, and a fine system of free schools for 
white and black. These are the coming schools of the city, as 
they will be of the South, or Tennessee at least. The State insti- 
tution for the deaf and dumb is located at Knoxville. The build- 
ing was used as a hospital during the war, but has been greatly 
enlarged since. The head of the school is Prof. Ijams, formerly 
of Washington City ; but my own "guide, philosopher and friend " 
in the establishment was Professor Hummel, a native of Knox- 
ville. From this gentleman I learned that " God's great gift of 
speech" not only need not be "abused," but that it need not be 
used. He explained the natural language common to deaf mutes, 
which he said would be sufficient for them if they were thrown 
into a community by themselves and without education. A class, 
the most advanced in the school, described by pantomime common 
objects, and the emotions of grief, anger, disgust, curiosity, and 
love. This was natural acting, and it occurred to rae that some 
of the dramatic sticks who disfigure the stage of Corinthian Hall 
might go to the nearest deaf and dumb asylum and learn some- 
thing. The school seemed a great success — a really happy place, 
destitute of that penal-settlement look common to some charitable 
institutions. 

The military history of Knoxville is very brief. The Confed- 
erates, during their occupation, never fortified it, nor did the Union 
troops do so until menaced by Longstreet. Why that officer al- 
lowed them time to do so, is one of the conundrums of the war. 
After he appeared, Buruside made great exertions, and threw up 
works so strong that they are powerful yet. In no place have I 
seen military remains in such full preservation. Longstreet in- 
vested the town on the north and west, and shut off" communica- 
tion pretty thoroughly. However, the scout Reynolds is still 
living, who entered the town with a dispatch to Buruside, an- 
nouncing the approach of relief. He carried the dispatch in the 
barrel of his revolver. I made a circuit of the works and in- 
spected Fort Sanders, where one of the most desperate charges 
and the most frightful slaughters of the war took place. It is still 
a very strong place, and was, when attacked, the strongest point 
in the whole line of defense, and much conjecture has been in- 



72 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

dulged iu why LoDgstreet selected it for the assault. It is ap- 
proached by a long, easy rise for half a mile, every foot of which 
is now open to view; probably it was then more covered with 
undergrowth. Up this slope came the Confederates, in face of a 
horrible fire, and clear to the deep ditch where the high slope of 
the work rose above them. Telegraph wire had been strung along 
the outer edge of the ditch, fixed to stakes, and over this the charg- 
ing men yet unwounded, fell headlong into the ditch. The car- 
nage was awful. The defenders cut short the fuses, and threw 
shell among the struggling masses in the ditch, tearing them to 
fragments. In spite of this, some of them reached the top of the 
work, and there is a story that one young lad clambered up with 
bis flag to the muzzle of a gun, called out, "Surrender!" and was 
blown, a blood}' mass, into the air by the discharge. The assault 
failed, and the ditch was full and the slope covered with the 
dead and wounded. The Confederate dead were hastily covered 
with earth, a short distance from the work, and a gentleman as- 
sured me that some days afterward he saw the hands and feet, and 
even faces of the dead, protruding from the ground. 

The Armstrong house, in front of Fort Sanders, is still stand- 
ing. It was occupied by the Confederate sharpshooters, who did 
much damage. A shot from this house killed General Sanders, 
after whom the fort was named. The Union sharpshooters kept 
up a fire on the house, and one of the enemy was killed in the ob- 
servatory. The blood-stains are still visible on the stairs. 

The portion of the city known as North Knoxvillewas burned 
by General Burnside, because it sheltered the enemy's skirmish- 
ers. It is now entirely rebuilt, much larger and finer than before. 
The line of defense on Summit Hill is now the vine-clad and tree- 
embowered Vine street. 

The name of Brownlow will always be associated with Knox- 
ville. I passed the brave Parson's old home, a two-story white 
frame house on Cumberland street, standing sheer with the side- 
walk. Near by is the little frame office where for so many years 
the editorials of the Knoxville Whig were written. It was at 
the porch gate that Miss Sue Brownlow, revolver in hand, de- 
fended the flag which symbolized the belief of that house and 



THE MOUNTAIN CAPITAL. 73 

family. I had the pleasure of meeting this lady, now Mrs. 
Boynton, and her interesting daughters — the granddaughters of 
the famous Parson. To Mrs. Boynton I am indebted for some 
incidents of the times that tried not only men's but women's 
souls. Of the Brownlow family, James Brownlow, a fighting 
volunteer Colonel, and afterward an officer in the regular army, 
is dead ; John Bell Brownlow holds a Government position in 
Washington. The four daughters, three of them married, and 
one a widow, reside in Knoxville. Horace Maynard has a very 
unpretentious drab frame house, built even with the sidewalk, 
and plain to ugliness. 

Having spoken of some prominent people, I may say that I 
made some inquiries concerning George Harris, who wrote the 
"Sut Lovengood" papers. Every elderly gentleman I have met 
in this region knew him perfectly, and no two agree about any- 
thing — placing the date of his death, for iustance, all the way 
from 1861 to 1870. He was a native of East Tennessee, with no 
special educational advantages; a little man with a peculiar, 
short, fast step. He had a few friends to whom he was devotedly 
attached, and who returned his affection. One of these was East- 
man, a Verraonter, who edited first a paper at Knoxville, and 
then the leading Democratic organ at Nashville. To Eastman 
the collected Lovengood sketches are dedicated. Harris was a 
mechanical genius — a sort of Col. Sellers, with a taste for every- 
thing that was unprofitable. He learned to be a tailor and also 
a silversmith. His sketches were published originally in the 
Nashville Union and American. He was postmaster at Knox- 
ville for a time. He appears to have finally become connected 
with the Wills Valley Railroad, and to have removed to Trenton, 
Georgia. In his latter days, I am told, he was quite dissipated. 
One day he was found, in a dying condition, in a car of the East 
Tennessee & Virginia road, at Knoxville. He was taken to the 
Atkin House, and there died. Hereabouts he is always spoken 
of as "Sut Lovengood," yet they remember little of him, after all. 
We remember those who make us weep, not those who make us 
laugh. Alas, poor Yorick! 



J 



CONCERNING TENNESSEE. 



Marietta, Ga., April 27, 1881. 

Before starting regularly upon the incidents of travel in 
Georgia, I think it proper to sura up, at least in a hasty way, 
my impressions of Tennessee. 

The State of Tennessee is divided, as everybody knows, into 
three remarkable natural and political divisions of West, Mid- 
dle and East Tennessee. It has always been so, and will prob- 
ably be so to the end of time. In the division of the State in- 
stitutions, in the make-up of State tickets, the existence of these 
three divisions is always recognized. 

Of West Tennessee, the capital of which is Memphis, I can- 
not speak either from past or present observation, and what I 
have to say is limited to the other two divisions. 

During my stay in the State I traversed it from the Ken- 
tucky line to Nashville; thence to Chattanooga, thence to 
Knoxville, and back to Chattanooga, I remained several days 
at Nashville, considering that a sort of center of business and 
opinion, and as good a point as any to gather the information I 
sought. 

Of the material development of the State there can be no 
doubt. If it is not a prosperous country, theu it is a very de- 
ceptive one. The last year of the war I was not serving in Ten- 
nessee, but from all accounts that year was the most destructive 
of the struggle. The fences left before went then. Said an ex- 
soldier to me: "I never smell cedar burning that I 'do not think 
of the rails we burned in Middle Tennessee." That part of the 
State was virtually put back over fifty years. The ex-Confed- 
erate coming back to the old plantation or farm, found it, to use 
a familiar illustration, "As bare as the back of your hand." 
The towns were little better off than the country. The houses, 
unpainted and uncared-for for four years, had been occupied as 
(74) 



CONCERNING TENNESSEE. 75 

officers' quarters, barracks or stores. Nearly every church was 
taken for a hospital ; old corrals, the homes of successive gener- 
ations of army mules, were a prominent object in the landscape. 
It was wretchedness itself. To bring things back to a condition 
as good as they were before the war would have been creditable, 
but Tennessee has done much better. 

The city of Nashville I have spoken of at some length in a 
previous letter, and have only to repeat that good work has been 
done there, and it has been done by Southern men. At Chat- 
tanooga more has been done than at Nashville; there, Northern 
men and money have aided in the work; but then Nashville has 
no such natural advantages as Chattanooga. I do not know half 
a dozen places in the South which have. Knoxville has the 
name of being a rich but slow old place. It has a lovely situ- 
ation naturally, but not railroads enough in sight from the roof 
of the United States court house. A road east through the 
mountains of North Carolina, and so to Augusta, Georgia, was 
begun years ago, but has got but sixteen miles ; another road, 
originally designed to reach Louisville, ends in the coal region 
at Graysville. Knoxville has virtually but one road, the East 
Tennessee & Virginia, running to Chattanooga, the "Gate." 
Knoxville will always be a nice town to live in. I can cheer- 
fully recommend it to Northerners. If they do not go to Chat- 
tanooga they had better go to Knoxville. 

There has been an immigration for some years to Tennessee 
from the North ; nothing like the rush to Kansas, of course, but 
still a steady movement. The new people come almost entirely 
from Ohio and Pennsylvania. They do not come, I think, in 
colonies — I should be sorry to think that necessary — but by ones 
and twos, and settle down among the Tennessee people. They 
have, as I have stated in a previous letter, occupied Missionary 
Ridge with their fields and gardens and vineyards. There have 
been failures. A gentleman told me that a party from Massa- 
chusetts had tried the experiment of farming in Franklin county, 
and had given it up and gone back to their old home. He at- 
tributed their bad luck to buying miserably poor land. At 
Chattanooga and at Knoxville I heard considerable about the 



76 SOUTHERN LETTERS. • 

Rugby colony, started by Mr. " Tom Brown" Hughes. Most 
people seem to regard it as an absurdity, and thought nothing 
could be done with the priggish Britons, who were already say- 
ing: "Why, hits a blawsted, beastly country, ye know." Mr. 
Hughes has certainly selected a very poor agricultural region for 
his experiment. 

It is quite probable that we make a mistake in inviting every- 
body to come to Kansas. To the mass of people in Iowa or Illi- 
nois, or any of the prairie States, and to many Indiauians, 
Ohioans or Pennsylvanians, Kansas affords the best outlet possi- 
ble; but there is a class of people in the States east of Illinois, 
accustomed to rocks, woods and hills, who seem to thrive in such 
surroundings, and are unhappy without them, who certainly ought 
not to try Kansas, and who might do well in Tennessee. 

The objection, of course, to a removal South, has all along 
been the disposition of the Southern people toward the Northern 
people coming among them. The past I do not propose to dis- 
cuss, and have only to say that I do not in the least doubt what 
has been said of social ostracism in the years succeeding the war, 
nor do I doubt that, in more-or-less benighted localities, it exists 
at present. The most I can say is, that the prejudice is disap- 
pearing in Tennessee; this was the testimony of a very large ma- 
jority of the intelligent men I conversed with, of every shade of 
political thinking. The South, even Tennessee, is not the North, 
and a Northern Republican will fiud the difference quite percep- 
tible; but by choosing his location in Tennessee he can live at 
peace with all mankind and stand a reasonable chance of dying 
peacefully in his bed. 

The great objection, I should say, to life in the rural districts 
of Tennessee, would be the want of schools. It must be remem- 
bered that there is no magnificent school' fund arising from the 
sale of public lauds, and that the whole burden of public educa- 
tion falls directly on the taxpayer. This, in a country where 
there is a large body of non-taxpayers, and where all have been 
but lately accustomed to a free-school system, is an onerous load. 
But the free schools are gaining ground. The cities have done 
nobly. Nashville has had a thorough public school system for 



CONCERNING TENNESSEE. 77 

twenty years; at Kuoxville there are fine buildings and an effi- 
cient corps of teachers, though the organization has been in ex- 
istence but ten years. I made it a business to talk with farmers, 
and country people, Southern men, and especially ex-Confederate 
soldiers, and I found them in favor of education for all, white 
and colored. They admitted the existence of opposition, but said 
it was dying out. I never heard, in Tennessee, any man seriously 
object to the education of the colored children. Some doubted 
the receptive faculty of the blacks; some said they were in favor 
of giving them all the education they were capable of receiving; 
one candid man, one of the most thoughtful persons I talked with, 
said to me: "You will disagree with me, and say that I believe 
a black man a mere animal, but I believe that giving a darkey 
au education generally fits him the better to be a rascal." Yet 
this man admitted that the colored school in his district was a 
success, and he also admitted that the young man from Fisk Uni- 
versity, who taught the school, had not been made a rascal by 
education. 

As the Kansas farmer has a disposition to croak all the spring 
over the poor prospects, and all the fall and winter because there 
is so much stuff in the country that prices are down to starvation 
figures, thus blaming the Creator of Kansas for doing too much 
or too little, so the Tennessee farmer has a chronic habit of growl- 
ing over the "unreliability of the new system of labor." He has 
rhymed it over a long time, and will for a long time to come. 
It is very curious to hear this old cry under all circumstances. I 
remember standing near a gang of colored laborers at the Roane 
iron works, at Chattanooga; they were loading steel rails on the 
cars. Out of the five hundred and fifty men employed at the 
works, half are black. Yet when I asked the white foreman how 
he got along with the black help, he said : " Oh, they're shiftless." 
Yet unless I happened to be, at the time, blind or crazy, they 
were working before my eyes, and that very hard and fast. The 
same story was told at the tannery, where many colored people 
were employed. The only variation I heard from the regular 
talk about unreliability, shiftlessness and laziness was at the Wus- 
son car works, at Chattanooe:a. There a foreman, an Eiiirlish- 



78 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

mau I judged, said that the colored employes did very well; that 
they were employed iu every department of the works, including 
the foundry, where there were seven black moulders. At the cot- 
ton factory at Nashville, the young man who showed me around 
said with great pride that there were only three "niggers" about 
the premises, and that if one were employed in the mill proper 
there would be a strike; yet as the same person told me that the 
late Legislature had passed a law which fixed the marriage license 
fee at $25, which he thought a good thing, as it would *' cut out 
these pore whites and niggers from marrying," I concluded that 
his store of information was not extensive and varied enough to 
be relied on. This young man had grown up since the war. I 
hope he did not represent the rising generation in the South. 

The Kansas Republican will probably attribute the improve- 
ment in Tennessee to the increasing strength of the Republican 
party in the State. If he does, he will get the cart before the 
horse — at least in my opinion. The political improvement is a re- 
sult rather than a cause. With slavery removed, the ideas of the 
North, about every question as well as politics, have a chance to 
spread and grow. Every Studebaker or Milburn or Coquillard 
wagon — and you see them at nearly every substantial farmer's 
door now — is a missionary. It tells the people that there is an- 
other country besides the South; that there is a North, a country 
filled with a prosperous and inventive people, who can make 
wagons and everything else. The South is filled with Northern 
commercial travelers and agents, who sell wagons and a thousand 
things besides; each one of these has his say and does his work. 
A hundred diflferent agencies are at work. Northern men are 
getting out Tennessee lumber and marble and iron and coal. I 
had no conception of the extent of these Southern industries 
until I came and saw for myself, nor do I think the most of 
!f^orthern people have. 

The State of Tennessee has always had a warm place in my 
heart. I have always believed it the first Southern State in point 
of resources. The climate is a delightful one, the golden mean 
between the too hot and the too cold, and besides, owing to the 
difference in elevation, you can have any variety of climate you 



CONCERNING TENNESSEE. 79 

want within the limits of the State. I believe there is a great 
future for the State. The action of the people iu regard to the 
debt has been most honorable, and must greatly help the credit 
of Tennessee. Occasionally I met a low-spirited citizen, who 
said: "Oh, our people are too slow; they will never improve the 
country;" but nevertheless I do not doubt that improvement 
will come. It does seem as impossible that the marble quarries 
and coal and iron and copper mines of East Tennessee will go 
undeveloped, as that the same number of gold mines would be. 
High up on the Southern mouutain-side, the other day, my guide 
pointed out to me that every fallen oak tree had been stripped of 
its bark. Somebody had clambered up there with great diffi- 
culty, and gathered the bark for a tannery established by a 
Northern man in the valley below. The sight gratified me. It 
meant business; it meant money for some poor mountaineer; it 
signified a sensible understanding between North and South ; it 
was the harbinger of more books, more school houses, and a wiser 
and more tolerant generation than ours. 

God, we are informed, did not hurry in making the world, and 
men can afford to wait for many things. The North can afford 
to wait for Tennessee, and as sure as the world moves — and he is 
a fool who says it does not move — the day will come when from 
the blue mountains that hem in the State on the east to the great 
tawny river that skirts her western boundary, the same ideas and 
the same prosperity will prevail in Tennessee that we know in 
Kansas. I should deem myself a very poor specimen of an Amer- 
ican if I did not hope so, and a very dull observer if I did not 
believe so. It will all come right, gentle reader, and don't you 
forget it. It will not be announced, this glad result, on any given 
day; by the unfolding of any flag, or by the resolutions of any 
political convention ; or the formal clasping of the fat hands of 
two sets of ];)oliticians. But you will know it when it comes, by 
the smoke of the furnace at the mountain-foot; the roaring blast 
at the quarry; the ringing ax in the forest glade; the contented 
faces and busy fingers in the cotton field; the whirring of ma- 
chinery in the factory ; the slow-gliding boats on the Cumberland 
and the Tennessee; and the rumble of trains where now the high- 
perched cedars look down on solitude. 



KENESAW. 

Atlanta, Ga., April 29, 18SI. 

The 2:45 p. m. train on the Western & Atlantic, on Tuesday 
last, pulled out from Chattanooga under a lowering sky. The 
dark curtains of the storm were being drawn around the land- 
scape; occasionally a great cloud of mist would almost hide Look- 
out, from sight, and the great height would emerge with something 
like a frown upon its mighty face. I took one more look, perhaps 
the last — and here I will say what I have before forgotten, that 
the famous White House still stands in the clearing, half-way up 
the northern slope. It is occupied by Mr. Cravens, who owned 
it at the time of the battle. 

The car was not crowded. There were several of the tall and 
indescribably emaciated country women who abound in this moun- 
tain country; several men to match; a man in Southern jeans, 
who seemed to wish to look like a Confederate, but who was really 
an Ohioan, and employed by Gen. Warner, ex-carpet-bag Senator 
from Alabama, at some iron works he owns in that State; a sure- 
enough Confederate, with one wooden leg, copperas breeches, and 
a slouch hat, going all the way from Texas to his old home in 
Georgia ; and a gentlemen opposite, who looked like Harry Bost- 
wick, and whom I took for a Northern business man. 

By the time we had passed the point of Missionary Ridge, and 
were bowling along toward the "laud of cotton" and likewise of 
"cinnamon seed and sandy bottom," it was raining furiously. 
The flat, yellow fields were flooded. Chickamauga station was 
passed unnoticed, for the train was the fast express, and does not 
stop at the little places. Nothing turned up familiar until the 
brakeman called " Ringgold." I camped on a high hill at this 
place once, but could see nothing of it. It grew darker and 
rainier and more lonesome, and I went across and sat with the 
man who looked like Harry Bostwick. He seemed to know 
(80) 



KENESAW. 81 

something of the country. I wondered what Illinois or Ohio or 
Indiana regiment he had belonged to. But it came out in a little 
while. He was on the "other side;" had fought us with a bat- 
talion of sharpshooters all the way from Dalton down to Atlanta, 
where he was wounded. He was an "original secessionist," if I 
ever met one. He had helped capture the Augusta arsenal at 
the first flash of the Rebellion, and had stuck to it as long as he 
could. Perhaps he would try it again if he had a chance, but I 
rather think not. As the rain was coming down in torrents, and 
the thunder was muttering and the gullies in the old fields were 
running full of yellow water, I remarked that, just as a matter 
of taste, I rather preferred riding in a comfortable passenger 
coach, to marching all the afternoon in the rain and sleeping be- 
tween two fence rails on one of those hillsides at night, and my 
Confederate fellow-traveler quite agreed with me. He was the 
first Confederate I ever met who admired Jeff. Davis. He thought 
him a great man, and said his forthcoming history would be the 
fairest account yet given of the war between the States. He 
talked Georgia politics some. He was anti- Joe Brown and anti- 
■Colquitt. And, by the way, the latter gentleman is in trouble. 
It is the old State-treasury trouble. They have had it bad in 
Missouri. It appears that the State money is deposited in banks, 
and some banks have broken lately, and when they came to look 
for the money it was not there, but the Governor's notes were. 
Putting the State money in a bad bank and borrowing the money 
yourself, is what the people call it. 

I looked eagerly about at Rocky Face and Buzzard Roost; 
but in the storm, and whisked about the curves at a high speed, 
it was impossible to distinguish anything. I passed within a few 
feet of where a dear friend of mine, throwing his hand to his 
breast, staggered and fell with his death-wound, but I could not 
mark the spot as we passed. 

At Dalton the rain seemed to have reached its lengthy and 
after that we saw the towns in a sulky drizzle. They had nearly 
all greatly improved. Cartersville I should never have known. 
A new brick town had sprung up in addition to the wooden town 
of old. Kingston looked more natural. Acworth had de- 



82 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

veloped into quite a handsome place. Big Shanty has but one 
"shanty" still, a raft of a house where the train takes supper. 
A smart yellow woman, with her head tied up in a red handker- 
chief, came through the cars with cups of coffeee, milk and 
sugar on a tray. This looked like "befo' de wah." Alatoona 
we missed, which we regretted. After passing Big Shanty the 
Confederate and myself kept a lookout for an object of mutual 
interest. I called him across finally to look. There it was, 
painted in black against the murky sky; the high hill with a 
lower one attached. It was Kenesaw. A tall, big man in thin 
black bombazine clothes, began to talk, and explained that he 
lived in Atlanta, and that the road made a big bend, so that the 
mountain appeared first on the left and then on the right, and 
that he was from Illinois; and I asked where he was in the days 
when Kenesaw was going into history, or words to that efiect, 
and he replied he was in Chicago, but he said in a voice like a 
duet by a trombone and a bass drum: "I followed you with the 
spelling-book and the Bible." I hope I appreciate both books, 
but this loud messenger of peace depressed me, and a great still- 
ness prevailed until I shook hands with the Confederate and got 
out in the blackness of darkness at Marietta. 

There was not much to be seen in Marietta, and if there had 
been it was too dark to see it. They said Mrs. Frances Willard 
was appointed to speak on temperance, at the court house, but I 
drank of the fountain freely flowing on that subject at Topeka last 
winter, and felt thoroughly saturated, and went to bed without 
hearing Mrs. Willard ; and every time I woke in the night, I could 
hear the rain pouring down and a gutter-spout dripping, and it 
made me think of "Bleak House." 

In the morning, and "hit a rainin'," as Sut Lovengood says, I 
went across to the livery stable and presented a card to Mr. Chuck 
Anderson. I asked that gentleman if he could give me informa- 
tion respecting the military lines about Kenesaw, and Chuck, a 
large, hearty, soldierly-looking man, said, "No sir, I served in the 
Virginia army ; " and so we understood each other. Before break- 
fast I went to the National Cemetery, and met Capt. Hughes, the 
gallant keeper, and gathered a rose-bud from the grave of poor, 



KENESAW. 83 

young John McGoveru,of "Ours,"who was killed at the crossing 
of the Chattahoochee; and after breakfast, Mr. Anderson sent out 
a little black, the best "single-foot racker" in Cobb county, and 
so I started for Kenesaw, 

Going out along a long maple-shaded lane, I overtook a gray- 
headed, homespun-clad farmer, on a white horse. He was reading 
a letter, and after learning where I was from he handed me the 
envelope. It was postmarked Atchison. The old man, whose 
name was Green, said he had two daughters in Atchison, and told 
me all about them, which is not material to this narrative. After 
awhile he made another revelation. He said, speaking of a period 
during the war, "At that time I was down here at a place called 
Andersonville," "And were you guarding our men there?" 
" I was." I looked at the old man with a genuine curiosity. I 
had never before heard a human being admit that he had had 
anything to do with that awful place. However, he seemed an 
honest old man, and I told him I should be very glad to hear his 
side of the story. He went on, in a very candid way, at some 
length. He said that never in his life had he offered an insult 
or an injury to a prisoneu,^ A prisoner of war could not be made 
comfortable. At Andersonville the prisoners suffered for shelter ; 
but the rations issued them were exactly the- same as those issued 
to the guards — pretty rough, he admitted. The hospital, he said, 
was not a bad place, and the rations there issued were better than 
the guard received. Wirtz he did not believe a bad-hearted man. 
He was a passionate man, but with a streak of humor in him. 
He cursed and threatened everybody, prisoners and guards alike, 
but after damning the object of his wrath, he frequently relented. 
He did not deny the great mortality at the prison, but he said 
there was a great difference in the prisoners; some were always 
active, engaged in something and kept themselves as clean as 
they could; while others sank into a sort of apathy, lay about, 
would not wash themselves, and died because they seemed not to 
care to live. The old man, having finished his story, went his 
road, and I moved into the woods and went on to the house of Mr. 
Kirk, who had been recommended by "Chuck" as familiar with 
the country. We were then under the western front of Big|Ken- 



84 SOUTHERxV LETTERS. 

esaw. The Kirks, the father and a grown son, mounted mules 
and started with me along the road about the foot of the mount- 
ain. We passed a heavy work which had evidently been built 
by the Confederates to prevent a flank movement in case we 
turned the Little Kenesaw end of the mountain. The old man 
said he had been employed, after the war, to accompany the party 
who removed the Federal dead, buried scattered about on the 
slopes of the mountain and elsewhere, to the cemetery at Marietta, 
and knew every foot of the ground. It was pleasant riding along 
in the damp woods, crossing the brawling mountain streams, and 
admiring the great masses of honeysuckles which shone in the 
green forest, and a score of other flowers I did not know by name. 
The old man told me that after the war the woods were full of 
guns, shells, bayonets and other old iron, and that he lived a year 
or two by hauling his findings to the foundry. Some people, he 
said, cut the bullets out of the trees and sold quantities of lead. 

We turned the extreme point of the mountain, and the old man 
led on to where he was certain my regiment was placed. I was 
certain he was wrong, but he said he could go directly to a place 
where "they were all jammed up together," where the "head-logs" 
were just as full as they could hold of bullets, and where the Fed- 
eral and Confederate dead were found side by side. I thought 
this must be the scene of the assault in which Col. Dan McCook, 
of our division, was killed, and his command frightfully cut 
up. He led to a spot, but it was not the spot. The old man 
seemed reluctant to ride over rough places, and manifested a 
general want of enterprise, and so we dismissed him, and young 
Mr. Kirk went on duty as "guide." 

We found works and works in the thick woods. Here were 
our lines running straight across the country, and there were 
rifle pits of both armies; everything in regular order just as it had 
been left. The Confederate lines were very strong. In one place 
the ditch was filled with young poplars thirty feet high, but the 
parapet had not in the least lost its outline or diminished in 
height. Some of the old rifle-pits were faced on the inside angle 
with logs, now mossy and decaying. Blackberries grew rank in 
the ditch, tangled creepers and vines massed on the slope. All 



KENESAW, 85 

was in the dense shade, and all was silence, where was heard once 
the sharp hum of the skirmisher's bullets, changing at times to 
an unearthly hiss, as they glanced from some tree and flew bat- 
tered through the air. 

The little black took everything he came to, clambering over 
works and feeling his sure-footed way across the old ditches. We 
rode back along the line until we came to the line of works di- 
rectly in front of Little Keuesaw and close to the mountain. 
There was the old breastwork just as the regiment left it; there 
was the almost perpendicular steep of the mountain, with the 
rocky wall near the top; there was the oJd place of the Confed- 
erate battery on the mountain over our heads, and I knew that 
behind us was the field where Barnett with his guns opened up 
on that battery and shut it up 

We then went straight to the mountain, and up the side, dis- 
mounting, and leading the animals as we neared the crest, and 
had to pick our way among the boulders. We came out on a 
lower ridge between the two mountains, then turned to Little 
Keuesaw, and in a few minutes rode up on the parapet of the 
Confederate battery, on the sunny, wind-swept height, and looked 
down to the spot from whence I had once looked very anxiously 
up. The battery was in very good shape, with traverses and 
embrasures for four guns. 

The vegetation at the mountain showed the effect of elevation 
and sterility. The masses of rocks were covered with moss ; cac- 
tus was abundant, and the oaks were stunted, twisted and covered 
with moss. We found the top of Big Kenesaw nearly destitute 
of vegetation; rocks were piled about. It was used by both 
armies as a signal station. The view was fine. A great, low, 
green forest plain, broken by plowed fields and crossed by the 
red lines of country roads, lay beneath us. At that height 
smaller elevations are not perceivable. The sky line was broken 
by the Blue Ridge; by the solitary rise of Lost Mountain, and 
the haystack-shaped outline of Stone Mountain. Below us the 
white houses of Marietta shone amid the trees; twenty miles 
away a solitary spire and a cloud of smoke betokened the site of 
Atlanta. 



86 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

It was a good place to have passed a sunny day, but we left it 
to the shadowy cows and phantom pigs, who seemed to have pre- 
empted the location. 

The young man told me about himself as we rode along. He 
was born within a mile of Kenesaw, and had never been seventy 
miles from home. He was a child when the war came, but remem- 
bered all about it. He remembered the Union officers had occu- 
pied one end of their cabin, and he had looked through their 
field-glasses. A shell struck the cabin one day, but he did not 
think he had ever known fear. The " old man " had got through 
the world early and easy. He was on duty at Savannah at one 
time, and dreamed "powerful dreams" of all the Yankees would 
do to the country. Everything had "come true." 

He said many Northern people came to Marietta in the summer- 
time. Several Northern men lived in the city. He knew and re- 
spected them very much. One of them he named, and said he 
could have any office in the county he wanted. He was certain 
there was no prejudice against Northerners in this part of the 
country. He thought there was a prejudice against working men 
like himself. He said that they had two grades of Baptist churches 
in Marietta, one for the rich, another for the poor. The develop- 
ment of the country he regarded as wonderful. Land that I 
laughed at he said was well worth $10 an acre. Cotton growing 
was on the increase, and 15,000 bales were marketed at Marietta 
in the season. The use of fertilizers was increasing. " Now," 
said he, "I am nothing but a little jackass farmer, but I used 
thirty-two hundred pounds of guano last year." Much more he 
told me, and pointed out, with a request that I call the attention 
of the public to it, "Bill Haine's peach orchard" on the northern 
slope of Big Kenesaw. 

Down the road up which the Confederate artillery was dragged, 
now traversed by tourists and picnic parties, we wended our way ; 
thence down one narrow lane and up another to the mansion of 
the Kirks, with the rail fence around it and the hollow-tree ash- 
hopper in the yard. They brought me a drink of the coldest and 
clearest water, and — "old times come again" — it was in a gourd. 

If there is any moral to this story, it is that the Kansas man 



KENESAW. 87 

who is tired of the prairie and the wind and the sun, and would 
fain refresh his soul, should come to Marietta, ask Mr. Chuck 
Anderson for the " Lester pony," hunt up young Marcus Kirk, 
and go to Kenesaw. 



Jl 



wj^h 



THE GATE CITY. 



Atlanta, Ga., April 30, 1881. 

Coming back to Marietta a few minutes too late for the 
Atlanta train, there was nothing for it but an afternoon in that 
drowsy seat of justice in and for the county of Cobb. 

Marietta has its busy season. Marcus Kirk thought it in the 
cotton-selling season a second New York. It claims 3,000 in- 
habitants, but a quieter 3,000 have never existed than possessed 
the shady town on the April day to which this record refers. 
The roomy Kenesaw House seemed as vast, and far more 
empty than the Mammoth Cave. Silence profound reigned on 
the public square. It is surrounded by two-story brick business 
houses ; before the war they were three-story, but at the close of 
the war there were none at all. In the center of the square is 
an octagonal park, dark with the shade of the trees. Radiating 
from the square are long streets lined with residences of a pat- 
tern peculiar, it seemed, to Marietta; white, one-story, very 
wide, with piazzas in front with classic wooden pillars of Greek 
models. These wooden columns seem to have appeared all over 
the South at once, and their size and height indicated the wealth 
and aristocracy of the owner of the mansion. Of course these 
white mansions were embowered in such vines and shrubbery as 
would make a Northern gardener turn as green as the leaves 
themselves with envy. Nature does more for every little South- 
ern town in this way than nature and art can do, or at least have 
done, for us, in any Kansas metropolis. 

Marietta did not look shabby by any means. It was only 
resting under its thousand trees. Everybody was sitting down. 
The merchants brought out cane-bottomed chairs and sat on the 
mossy brick sidewalks in front of their stores; the ladies, as 
the evening drew on, sat on the low, wide-front verandas, or in 
the doorways; the children did not run and whoop, after the 
(88) 



THE GATE CITY. 89 

manner of the youth of Kansas, but sat around in a ring on the 
ground, and played some game in which legs do not count. A 
very restful place is Marietta, when the sun goes down. I gath- 
ered no information about the city. People are not communica- 
tive in a city of three thousand, where the post office is closed at 
five o'clock p. m. 

In the dusk the fast train on the Western & Atlantic bore me 
on to Atlanta. Nothing seemed to so tell me that peace had 
come as the fact that you made the run from Chattanooga to 
Atlanta in five hours; and the journey before cost so many 
weary, bloody weeks. 

Riding along in the soft April night, and gazing at the sky 
and the stars which shone with unusual brilliancy, I tried to re- 
construct the Atlanta I had last seen, but it was a difficult task. 
We had come into the town from Jonesborough, having taken 
part in the movement called by the boys the " swing around by 
Red Oak," and the consequent battle at Jonesborough. We lay 
in the open ground out at a suburb, Whitehall, for a few days. 
Then the command went off on a long chase after Forrest, in 
North Alabama, and I was left in Atlanta. It seemed like a 
town stricken with the plague. It was hot, dusty, desolate. 
The inhabitants were nearly all gone; there did not even seem to 
be many troops in the place; nothing but wagon trains and 
mules. The monotony was insufierable, and I started out in 
pursuit of the regiment and met it at Rome, coming back from 
the Forrest "water haul," and then trudged back to Atlanta 
again. Camping on a rise in the edge of the town that night, I 
saw the city burn, or at least every house or shop in it which 
could be of use to the Confederacy. It was a fire that no one 
tried to extinguish. The flames rose against the sky of night, it 
seemed with a sort of steady, destructive purpose. The hundreds 
of shells fired into the town, and which had not exploded, burst 
as the fire reached them. This lasted all night. In the morning 
we marched away, going around the town, as one would shun the 
sight of a dead man lying in the woods. 

After leaving Marietta the train made few stops, as if there 
were nothing worth considering except Atlanta. The pine woods 



■90 SOUTHERX LETTERS. 

ceased all at once at the danciug flames and dusky shadows of 
what seemed a rolling-mill ; then there was visible somewhere the 
hundred gleaming windows of a cotton factory; then here we 
were in the heart of a city, under the great open arch of the car- 
shed — union depot we would call it in Kansas — and street-car 
bells were ringing, and a long line of hacks was waiting, and 
there were great hotels, all a-light from sidewalk to cornice; and 
long rows of stores of all sorts, all with open doors, and filled 
with people — and this was Atlanta. I had found business and 
beauty for ashes. 

It had been my purpose to write something about the remains 
of the war about Atlanta, but there is nothing in the city to re- 
mind you that there had ever been a war. Atlanta is the new 
creation of peace. Everything you see is less than twenty years 
old — even the trees that shade the streets. There was some old 
iron and an ash-heap here once, but that has nothing to do with 
the Atlanta of now. 

I do not pretend to account for the existence of Atlanta. It 
is called the "Gate City," because it lies just a little outside of 
the last mountain ridge crossing the State of Georgia. But 
there are just as good "gates" anywhere within a radius of fifty 
miles. It is not as near the center of the State as Macon. There 
was not much expected of it at first. They cut out a place in 
the scrub oaks, among the low red hills, and called it Marthas- 
ville — a compliment to the daughter of Governor Lumpkin. 
Now nobody expected Marthasville to be a great place, any more 
than it is expected that any of the hundred " Jimtowns" in the 
United States will rise to celebrity. As soon as it was seen that 
the town had the grow in it, Marthasville gave way to Atlanta — 
big and classical. 

I suppose the purchase of Cherokee Georgia beyond the Chat- 
tahoochee helped Atlanta, but its day came with the railroads. 
It must have been the first town in the South to be built by rail- 
roads. It was probably gifted with the railroad spirit from the 
first, just as some colts of no known pedigree turn out famous 
flyers like Goldsmith Maid. At the outset of the war Atlanta 
had a great name, but small towns in a rural country like the old 



THE GATE CITY. 91 

South had a great reputation. Our soldiers were greatly sur- 
prised, on entering some of these metropolises, to observe that 
they were little more than villages. With the war came Atlanta's 
destruction and advertisement. It is no small thing for a town, 
no matter under what circumstances, to be mentioned for three 
or four months in every newspaper in the world. The railroads 
were torn up and the depots burned down, and what was more 
natural than that at the end of the war, they should be restored ? 
Had there been no war I firmly believe there would have been no 
Atlanta as we know it. Some Northern men went there at once, 
Kimball for one, and while the carpet-bag regime is a thing of 
the past, it lasted long enough to make Atlanta the capital of 
the State, and do other things which will help Atlanta as long as 
one stone remains upon another. 

Some Southern cities moaned and sulked awhile after the war. 
Atlanta did not, and I found a proof of it before I had looked 
about the town half an hour. The public library, the first place 
I visited, owns property valued at 835,000, and it was started in 
1867, two years after the close of the war. I found the nine 
thousand volumes in a lofty hall, with alcoves marked, "History," 
"Poetry," "Romance," and so on, and there was an open-roof 
ceiling, and stained-glass windows, and a wide gallery, and much 
magnificence, and they told me that the institution was started in 
1867, only two years after I saw the hereinbefore-mentioned fire. 
One would have thought that books and pictures were the last 
things to be thought of at such a time. The librarian was a 
young man, and very courteous. He brought me General Joseph 
E. Johnston's history of his operations in defense of Georgia and 
Atlanta, and I wish to digress enough here to say that General 
Johnston tells the truth, whatever Jeff. Davis or anybody else 
may have to say about it. 

The gallery is devoted to works of art, portraits, so far, of 
Georgia civilians, great and small, and Confederate Generals, Lee, 
Johnston, Cobb, and others. Th6re are also several Confederate 
battle-flags in glass cases. As a Northerner, or rather as an Amer- 
ican, I might have liked it better had there been a Union General 
or two, say McPherson or Thomas, on the wall, or, hanging up 



92 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

somewhere, the flag of tbe United States, of which Georgia is be- 
lieved to be a member at present; but I was satisfied in knowing 
that the Northern idea was here in the shape of these books, and 
that had it not been for the victory of the Union there never would 
have been any public library at all. The Confederacy, had it 
succeeded, would never have established any libraries; you may 
be sure of that. Among the portraits, I noticed that of Senator 
Joseph E. Brown, or in common talk, Joe Brown. This was 
proper. He took the bonds issued to erect the building; his son, 
Julius L. Brown, is the president of the library association. Gov- 
ernor Brown is a South Carolinian, I believe, but not of the 
hereditary aristocracy of that country. He looks like the shrewd 
old Yankee farmer I have seen act as moderator in a Vermont 
town meeting. 

After looking through the library I went to the capitol. It 
was Kimball's Opera House once, and was sold to the State for a 
good figure, at which Georgia howled, if I remember rightly, but 
it makes a good-enough capitol. The offices are quite as good as 
those in the Tennessee capitol. The halls are plain, dirty sort of 
rooms. In the representatives hall are some old portraits which 
somehow got through the war and were brought from Milledge- 
ville. One of JeflTerson, I noted, because his hair was of the right 
color, not common in his pictures. There was one of Oglethorpe, 
first Governor of Georgia. The janitor, a young man who had 
lost a leg and arm for the Confederacy, called it Ogletharpe. 
Governor Colquitt, who is always ready to talk, or if called upon, 
to sing and pray with any visitor, was not in the building. They 
are to have a new capitol at Atlanta, and the site has already been 
selected. 

For the rest, I made only a very general survey of Atlanta. 
The readers of the Champion know just how a flourishing North- 
ern city of 40,000 inhabitants looks, and that is substantially 
the way Atlanta looks. There is, however, the dash and racket 
about Atlanta peculiar to a new town. It is all less than twenty 
years old. There is a profusion of street-car lines; and they run 
on the principal streets, and all center at the union depot, or as 
they call it in Atlanta, the car-sheds. I rode out in the evening, 



THE GATE CITY. 93 

on Peachtree and Washington and McDonough streets, and saw 
absolutely the latest styles in the way of residences. It looked 
like an architects' exposition. Every style; you pay your money 
and you take your choice. Such porches and pinnacles, and arches 
and recesses, and piazzas and verandas, and galleries and porches, 
and everything as new as if it had been built yesterday, as most 
probably it was. Peachtree street was quite alive with dashing 
turnouts, and all the piazzas were filled with ladies and children, 
and occasionally a husband and father who had not yet started 
down town to the lodge. It was very gay. They told me this 
house was built by a cotton dealer, and that by a tobacco man, 
and so on. The Southern business man loves to spend his money 
and make a show. His surplus cash formerly went to organize 
a personal staff of colored servants, who kept him waiting for 
whatever he wanted all the days of his life, and redounded more 
to his glory than his comfort; but now he builds a fine house on 
the best street in town, or puts up a business block with his name 
on the front in large letters. I may say that Gov. Brown's 
singularly un-Carolinian disposition shows itself in a very plain 
mansion, though he has money enough to buy a street. There 
were stories about some of the houses, and in one fine mansion I 
was told there had lived a poor mad woman. Marrying against 
her wish, she came to live in this fine house. The man she loved 
and rejected came to live in the next house. She saw him come 
and go, day by day. She heard his footstep on the walk, his 
hand upon the latch — but not at her gate — late at night, and 
her brain turned under the strain, and she became a violent 
maniac. The story was told me by a woman, of course. It was 
the only romance I heard in Atlanta, and I tell it as it was told 
me. 

I believe manufacturing has not yet become a leading interest 
in Atlanta. But it is growing; bless your soul, they are going to 
have everything in Atlanta. There is a big cotton factory. In 
any other town it would have been lighted with gas, but in Atlanta 
it is illuminated with the electric light. There are cotton com- 
presses, and foundries, and fertilizer works. The South has the 
fertilizer mania bad, and "Guano" in big black letters. There 



94 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

is an ice factory; no Southern town of size can get along without 
one now ; there are car works and planing mills, and various 
sorts of wood-working factories, and they manufacture cotton 
gins, and are about to give the Northern manufacturers some 
competition in the way of making wagons. The most enormous de- 
velopment is in the way of hotels. I doubt if any other town of 
its size in the world has as many large hotels. The Kimball 
House is big enough for Chicago, and was built in less time than 
any house of the same size in America; and all the hotels ap- 
peared to be crowded. 

Atlanta is a great town for excursions and receptions. I was 
pointed out, as one of the celebrities of the town, the captain of 
the Gate City Guards, the crack military corps of the city, who 
do the leading procession business. A few days before my arrival 
the Southern Decoration Day was observed, the Gate City Guards 
turned out with the Cadets, and the graves of both the Union 
and Confederate dead were strewn with flowers. Speaking of sol- 
diers, a small artillery garrison is kept here in a range of ugly 
wooden buildings known as McPherson Barracks. But regular 
soldiers make a town look peaceful rather than otherwise. 

Of course I visited the Constitution office. The Constitution 
is regarded as the leading Southern newspaper. The editor, Mr. 
Finch, is from Hornellsville, N. Y., and was brought up with 
Dwight Thacher. I found Mr. Finch in a rusty editorial room 
of the ancient type. It did not even rival the modest gentility 
of The Champion sanctum, and Southern newspapers do not yet 
aspire to the gaudy splendors of a dado room. Mr. Finch is a 
Northerner of the purest type, and may live South for a thousand 
years and will never be anything else. Not bred to the editorial 
profession, a writer for the press only as an occasional con- 
tributor, he came South nine years ago, and associating himself 
with native citizens, has built up the best-paying paper south of 
Louisville. The Constitution has " made it," by identifying 
itself with its section, employing the best Southern talent, and 
discarding the old "gags" that made the old-fashioned Southern, 
bilious, bombastic newspaper a laughing-stock. The Constitution 
reaches with an iron hand for the long-haired country " Cunnel" 



THE GATE CITY. 95 

who, in the Magnolia Blossom and Southron Chinkapin, talks 
about "paladins" and "knights," and the "master race," and 
"mercenary Yankees," and all that rot. At the same time, the 
Constitution is a Southern paper. It has developed "Bill Arp'' 
and "Uncle Remus," and published the best sketches of the old 
South that I know of — the recollections of Col. W. H. Sparks, 
the author of " Reminiscences of Fifty Years." Mr. Finch ap- 
pears abundantly satisfied with the situation. He said to rae 
that about the first thing a Southern politician had to say now 
was, that slavery was fortunately abolished, and that secession 
was a great mistake. He thought Northern people could do 
well in Georgia, but that it would be pleasanter for them to 
come in colonies; not for protection or anything of that kind, 
but for society's sake at first. The old South was isolated from 
the rest of the world by slavery. An isolated people are every- 
where a vain people; knowing no other, they esteem themselves 
above everybody else. The barrier removed. Southern people 
are coming to believe the German saying, "Beyond the moun- 
tains there are men also." 

Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, "Uncle Remus," is an associate edi- 
tor of the Constitution, and does the paragraphing work besides 
the " Uncle Remus" papers. Mr. Harris is a native Georgian, a 
boyish-looking man, with red hair, a freckled face, a retreating 
double chin, and wears the eleven-dollar cassimere suit adopted 
as the uniform of the " luter-State Press Association" organized 
at Topeka last winter. He has served his time also at the case. 
Mr. Harris is very quiet in his ways, says little, and does all his 
laughing internally. He is a success. " Uncle Remus " is read 
all over the South ; quite as generally, I think, in the North; and 
has been warmly commended by literary critics in England. 
Southern people express various opinions. One gentleman thought 
the dialect exaggerated ; another that Mr. Harris put too much 
brains in the nigger ; " but Col. Sparks, than whom no better au- 
thority exists in the South, testified to the perfect fidelity to nature 
of " Uncle Remus's" talk. There is a wonderful touch of kind- 
ness about the old darkey's talks, of late, with the " little sick 
boy," which, it seems to me, must touch every heart, and stamps 
the writer as a skillful player upon that wondrous instrument. 



yt) SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

I have referred to Col. W. H. Sparks, a gentleraau known 
throughout the South. It was my good fortuue to pass a few 
moments in the society of this venerable gentleman and his bright 
wife. All his life the companion and friend of the most dis- 
tinguished men of his section, as well as many Northern statesmen 
men of the old school; familiar with all the upper walks of pol- 
itics and society, he has retained a wonderful fund of recollec- 
tions, which he gives you in the clearest and most charming 
manner. I called to talk with him about the old song of " Rosin 
the Bow," of which he has given the world the only true version 
and history. The title is a corruption of "Rossum the Beau," 
and Rossum was an actual personage. He, Col. Sparks, not 
Rossum, informed me that the air was a very old one, a Metho- 
dist hymn tune. "I heard it," said ray aged chronicler, "in 
Bishop Asbury's time." Col. Sparks gave me some interesting 
bits of information about Judge Longstreet, whose " Georgia 
Scenes" have been so long admired, and he claimed for James 
Longstreet, the grandfather of General Longstreet, the honor of 
having been the first man to practically apply steam power to 
river navigation, the river being the Savannah. Col. Sparks's 
book, "The Reminiscences of Fifty Years," is a delightful vol- 
ume, and will be more prized when the days of the " Old South," 
shall be with the "years beyond the flood." 

The State of Georgia has established an Agricultural Depart- 
ment, similar in its purposes to our own. Dr. Thomas P. Janes, 
Commissioner of Agriculture, has issued a little "Manual of 
Georgia," which I have found very useful. I also met Mr. J. 
Henley Smith, of Atlanta, who is interested in real estate opera- 
tions, and who extended to me many courtesies; and as a slight 
return for them, I advised him to go to Kansas, where the great 
land-grant railroad companies have reduced land-selling to an 
extremely fine point, and where the real estate agents are the 
most eloquent, imaginative, audacious and successful in the world. 
Mr. Smith believes in Northern emigration to Georgia, and is 
working for it. 

The city and its people so engrossed ray attention that I went 
but once beyond its precincts, and that was to visit Clark Uni- 



THE (rATE CITY. 97 

versity, a Methodist school for colored students, to which Mrs. 
Chrisraau, of Topeka, has given $10,000. I found a good build- 
ing, surrounded by the natural forest, a mile or two beyond the 
city limits. The President and most of the professors were ab- 
sent, but the steward was busy, in charge of a lot of colored stu- 
dents, in erecting a mechanical building, in which carpentering 
and other trades will be taught. An excellent idea. He re- 
ported the school in a flourishing condition. 

Most towns disappoint us; Atlanta does not. The only diffi- 
culty in writing about it is, as I have stated, its resemblance to 
other prosperous cities of its size. It claims 42,000 people. It 
is well built, in modern style, and is filled with the men of to-day. 
And as the drowsy village of Milledgeville, the old capital of 
Georgia, compares with Atlanta, so will the Georgia of the past 
compare with the Georgia of the future, of which Atlanta will 
be, as now, the "Gate City." 



A 



HIGH GEORGIA, 



Tallula Falls, Ga., May 1, 1S81. 

When at Knoxville, I looked longingly at the blue line of the 
smoky range and inquired if there was no direct route to the 
wonderful mountains and cascades which I had been told ex- 
isted in Rabun county, Georgia. No road I found had pene- 
trated farther eastward than sixteen miles from Knoxville, a 
long way from Rabun Gap. Yesterday morning I learned from 
Mr. J. Henley Smith, of Atlanta, that Rabun could be reached 
by the Air Line, and abandoning the idea of going at once to 
Savannah, I took the three o'clock train for Toccoa City, ninety- 
two miles north of Atlanta. 

The Air Line road is a comparatively new line, having been 
built in 1868. It is the direct route from Richmond and the 
North to Atlanta. The fast mail from New York to New Or- 
leans, via Atlanta, passes over it. It has lately been consoli- 
dated with the Richmond & Danville, and is excellently equipped, 
and it had on the train yesterday the gayest, best-natured, most 
amusing and most instructive conductor I ever met — Mr. 
McCool. This gentleman was no stiff-legged and iron-backed 
minion of a corporation, intent only on knocking down fares and 
preserving his dignity. On the other hand, he was " the life of 
the festal board." If the train came to a halt, he put his head 
in the door and remarked, "If you want to know why the train 
stopped, it's to get wood." When any point of interest was 
being approached, he would sing out, "All on this side now; we 
are coming to Currahee mountain and Currahee valley. " Two 
fountains by the track he alluded to as the "Geysers," and a 
dirty-faced woman with a child in her arms, at a tumble-down 
wayside shanty, he explained to the passengers was " love in a 
cottage." When we reached, simultaneously, dark, Toccoa City 
and supper, he called out at the supper table at frequent inter- 
vals: "Take your time, ladies and gentlemen. Eat all the sup- 
(98) 



HIGH GEORGIA. 99 

per you want; there is plenty of time." I was not astonished 
to learn that Mr. McCool was respected by the men and idolized 
by all the women on the Air Line. 

The ninety-two miles between Atlanta and Toccoa is up hill 
all the way to Mount Airy, which is 1,600 feet above the sea 
level, and is the highest town and railroad point in the South. 
There is a fine hotel there, a resort in summer for visitors from 
the lower Southern country, and for consumptives from both 
North and South. The scenery for most of the way is monoto- 
nous — a succession of piney woods, red-clay cuts, old fields, new 
fields white in the sun, and little sun-dried station towns. The 
striking exception to these last is Gainesville, a place of 2,500 
people, the station for Dahlonega, the center of the gold-mining 
region of Georgia, and the former site of the United States mint, 
I found the Air Line did not pass nearer than some twenty miles 
to any gold mine. Gold is found in fifty Georgia counties, prin- 
cipally in the northern part of the State. The most extensive 
operations are carried on around Dahlonega, where a Northern 
company has introduced hydraulic mining on a large scale, and 
is making it pay. Placer mining, with sluices, rockers, etc., has 
been carried on in a rude way for many years. But as I came 
to see mountains and waterfalls, and not gold mines, we will re- 
vert to the scenery, which, as I have said, was monotonous, until, 
neariug Mount Airy, I caught sight, to the northwest, of the line 
of the Blue Ridge, which I had turned by the gate of Chatta- 
nooga. There they were again, stretching along from northeast 
to southwest — low mountains and high mountains, one chain be- 
hind the other, the long billowy line between us and the setting 
sun. And as one star differeth from another in glory, so did one 
mountain from another ; for resting against the crimson sky 
of eve, one peak was like the crest of the ocean wave, and 
another was a pinnacle, and one was dark, and another pur- 
ple, and another amethyst. Most have no names, except local 
ones known to people who live about them, but the names left 
are those given by the Cherokees. There is Mount Yonah, high- 
est of all; and the valleys are Cherokee, too, as the Nacoochee; 
and from out the mountains emerge streams with the soft Indian 



100 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

uames, the Tallula aud the Chattooga, the Toccoa and the 
Tugaloo. 

I found Toccoa a pine town in the pine woods. It has always 
been there, I believe, but more so since the railroad came. It is 
eleven hundred feet above the sea, but you do not know it. I 
slept and ate in a pine hotel, with no lath or plaster or carpet; 
neither was there any dirt, and the ventilation was perfect, and so 
were the ham and eggs. The landlord is known to all the country 
as "Cousin John." He has another name, I think, but if you go 
to Toccoa aud inquire for "Le Hotel de Cousin Jean," you will 
find it. The universal relative knows all about gold, also about 
amethysts, aud also about that curious substance, asbestos, which 
the soil bears abundantly in the county of Habersham and the 
counties round about. 

Lying over night at Toccoa, I made diligent inquiries about the 
county of Rabun. It is the most perpendicular of Georgia coun- 
ties. Eighty-one per cent, of its surface is too mountainous for 
cultivation. It has but one town, Clayton, which has 120 inhab- 
itants ; and has produced but oue eminent person. Judge Bleckley, 
of the Georgia Supreme bench, and the Eugene Ware of the same, 
whose funny decisions appear to afford the Albany Law Journal 
an endless supply of amusement. Rabun is the corner-stone of 
Georgia, and possesses the most striking mountain scenery within 
its borders. It produces gold, asbestos aud moonshiners, each in- 
destructible productions. 

I learned at Toccoa City that the first object of my quest, Toc- 
coa Falls, was within two miles, but that a sight of Tallula Falls 
necessitated a journey to the borders of Rabun, sixteen miles 
away. 

This morning the awkward journey was accomplished. The 
road led over the foot-hills and through the pine and oak forest 
all the way. We came first to Toccoa Falls. It was in the 
early, clear morning, before the air had been colored or stained 
or heated by the advancing day, that I saw this most beautiful 
of cascades. You leave the team a little way aud go up a tiny 
valley. It is shut in by wooded hills, so narrow that you could 
toss a stone across it. It is all shade and coolness and seclusion. 



HIGH GEORGIA. 101 

You come to a sheer granite wall, black and yellow and brown, 
and the Toccoa, a small mountain stream of sparkling water, 
coming from the mountain, arrives at the verge of this wall and 
drops over it, one hundred and eighty-six feet. There is no roar, 
no jar, no rising cloud of spray, no whirlpools, no rushing rap- 
ids. All at once the water comes to the wall, springs lightly in 
a mass into the air, and drops down into a little pool as clear as 
crystal. First water, then snowy foam, then still water again. 
A great mass of rock has fallen, and the lower part of the cas- 
cade is hidden by it. The fall is slightly parted by a shelving 
rock at the top, and so seems in two divisions. This is Toccoa 
Falls. It is within two miles of one of the leading railroads of 
the South, and is hardly known. I went around and reached the 
top of the fall, and lay down on the rock where I could almost 
put my hand in the water after it makes the spring. It was like 
looking into a cascade of diamonds. Above and below, the Toc- 
coa glides along unnoticed. It is splendid only at one place and 
for an instant, like a human life illumined by one great deed. 

Leaving Toccoa Falls, we went on over the high hills. Monk, 
the driver, said they were mountains; this one was Walker 
mountain, and the other, Panther mountain. They did not seem 
mountains, and are really the foot-hills that finally run into 
Tallula Ridge, and so on higher and higher to the great Blue 
Ridge. The country seemed miserably poor, and was well set- 
tled, as I think every poor country is. I have ridden ten miles 
in two of the oldest-settled counties of Kansas within a few years 
past, over as fertile prairie as ever the sun shone on, without pass- 
ing near a house; yet on this rough mountain road the cabins 
were within sight of each other all the way. The houses were all 
of pine logs and pine boards. The chimneys were either of sand 
rock or sticks and yellow clay. All the material for the habita- 
tions was gathered within a few steps of where they stood. They 
seemed a part of the mountains and the woods, as a bird's nest 
seems part of the tree. If one of these houses burns down, it is 
only necessary to go out in the woods and get another one. The 
openness of the sides and the unreliability of the roof would 
terrify a Kansan, even though he is a resident of the Italy of 



102 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

America. The people who thus humbly lived did not appear to 
be idlers. At nearly all the houses there was an old-fashioned 
loom and spinning-wheel on the porch. The doors were all open, 
and the often solitary room seemed to have known the wisp broom, 
which was always in sight. 

On the road we found one school house, ten miles from Toccoa. 
It was a little pine log cabin on a hillside, in an old field grown 
up to scattered pines. The door was fastened with a staple and 
hasp, with a stick for a lock. I made bold to enter the moun- 
tain seminary. It could not have been over twelve feet square; 
the loose boards which constituted the ceiling were but little 
over six feet from the floor. There were some pine slab benches 
with the bark on, and a pine table for the teacher, and a brush 
broom. There was a stone fireplace, and in the corner lay an 
armful of pine knots. I picked up a tattered spelling-book 
from the floor. A poor place this, I thought, and yet on this 
humble altar is kindled learning's sacred flame. This tattered 
book is the key that unlocks all. This may bring to the moun- 
tain child all that is recorded in our English speech of the 
studies of the wise, the wit of the bright and gay, the valor of 
the brave. "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a 
cage," nor can this rude hut shut in or cabin or confine the soul 
that is inspired of heaven. From this old field the sower may 
go forth to sow the field which is the world. 

Nature has been kind to these hills in one respect. Such a 
profusion of wild flowers I never saw in any other country. 
One ravine was lined on both sides with honeysuckles as far as 
the eye could reach; great patches of violets and a sort of dwarf 
fieur de lis brightened the ground ; and the dogwood reared its 
head of snow everywhere. The prodigal hand of nature seems 
to satisfy the natives. I saw, however, a great thicket of yellow 
roses in front of one cabin, and a shrub with flowers like the 
fuchsia, which the woman said were called "flower of pear." 

There was among these primitive people some signs of pros- 
perity. The grist mill was about the roughest collection of 
wooden wheels ever turned by water, but we passed a modern 
saw mill and several new houses. I hope the country may grow 



HIGH GEORGIA. 103 

SO rich that there will be a change of cootour. We did not pass 
on the road a man, woman, child, horse, cow or dog that was fat. 

All the time occupied in these reflections we were rising from 
high into higher Georgia, and in due time arrived at the Tallula 
Falls Hotel, 2,382 feet above the level of the sea, on the bourl- 
ary between Rabun and Habersham, and the head of the succes- 
sion of cataracts known as Tallula Falls, or, more properly speak- 
ing, the Falls of Tallula. 

The Tallula is a stream rising in the heart of the mountains 
about twenty miles from here; gathering volume as it comes 
tumbling along, winding in and out among the mountains, until, 
a river some fifty yards in width, it breaks boldly through the 
range here on its way to the Tugaloo, and thence to the Savan- 
nah and the ocean. The falls have been visited for at least forty 
years, parties coming from all over Georgia and camping out in 
the woods. The hotel is a modern idea. It is a roomy structure 
with wide piazzas and halls. The rooms are ceiled, not plastered 
and papered, and on all the mantels were great bouquets of honey- 
suckles. In summer guests are plentiful, but, as at the Mam- 
moth Cave, I chanced to be ahead of the season. Mrs. Young, 
the landlady, did the honors of the establishment, and when I am 
luxuriating in the wealth which always finally flows in on the 
newspaper man, I shall undoubtedly sigh over the dishes pre- 
pared by my French cook, for the wholesome fare and the colos- 
sal appetite that waited on it in the breezy dining room at Tal- 
lula, which was filled with the fragrance of the honeysuckle and 
the sound of falling waters. 

After dinner, with Monk for a guide, I went to look at the 
river. The Tallula ripples along at its usual width, until a little 
above the hotel it strikes the barrier. Then begin what are 
called the Indian Arrow rapids. The vexed river zig-zags, bends 
to and fro in its war with the rock, and lashes itself to foam. 
This continues for half a mile, when the river, now hemmed in 
by immense cliffs, rushes down the fall of Ladore. The perpen- 
dicular fall is forty feet, but the incline down which the water 
speeds its swift and foaming way is a hundred feet or more. To 
approach the river it is necessary to clamber down the cliffs from 



104 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

rock to rock, or by a steep path through thickets of laurel. The 
laurel, when youug, is quite symmetrical, but in age, like the 
temper of some old people, it becomes gnarled and knotty. It 
grows in all sorts of fantastic shapes in root and branch. So by 
root and branch you clamber down, or at times keep along the 
clitls in the path carpeted with pine straw. Between the laurel 
and the pine the air is filled with a bracing aromatic odor. 

After the leap of Ladore, the water slides down a few yards 
further, and then makes the Tempestia fall. The river, confined 
to half its natural width, leaps, an almost square mass, into the 
air, and striking on a step of the unyielding granite, is converted 
into foam and spray, which, driven against the black cliffs that 
rise from the foot of the fall, exactly resemble the snow pursued 
by a Kansas blast. The Tempestia fall is eighty-one feet per- 
pendicularly. As the river pursues its way down the gorge the 
cliffs on either side rise higher, attaining in some places an alti- 
tude of nine hundred feet. Several beautiful cascades come in 
on either hand. The Caledonia drops from rock to rock over 
five hundred feet. The Ribbon cascade falls in successive steps 
eight hundred feet. A little below the Tempestia is the Hurri- 
cane fall. The water here, before making the plunge, seems to 
swing in a mass sideways up a considerable incline. At the very 
verge, looking across the fall, there is a foaming crest, like the 
wake of a great steamer. The spring made, the Tallula falls, in 
foam and thunder, for ninety feet. The spray rises against the 
granite wall for more than two hundred feet, and returns in a 
million trickling drops. Where a crevice affords a foothold, 
masses of some creeping plant of the brightest green cover the 
face of the rock, and every delicate leaf trembles in the breath 
of the fall. The water roars, the condensed spray trickles, the 
leaves quiver, and against the black cliflT a rainbow shines, and 
so it goes on forever. 

Nothing can be more dramatic than the succession of these won- 
ders. At first is the Ladore fall, by itself not remarkable, but 
as the visitor follows the stream, availing himself of every point 
of observation, the scenes increase in interest. From a shelving 
rock high above the stream, called "Cupid's Repose," the La- 



HIGH GEORGIA. 105 

dore, Tempestia and Hurricane falls may all be seen at once. 
The banks are as striking as the river. Lying on the rock one 
looks down into the tops of great pines and hemlocks, and into 
the mass of smaller trees into which seem to grow every tree 
known in America. There are several of these lookouts, with 
various romantic names, the view from each being entirely dif- 
ferent. The stream makes two more falls, the Oceana and the 
Bridal Veil, each remarkable for beauty rather than grandeur. 
At last comes the Grand Chasm. Looking down, the river, 
seeming a mere ribbon, describes the form of the letter U, and 
the outside curve of the U is formed of cliffs sloping like the 
inside of a bowl, and for a great height as smooth. From the 
summit of these to the river is eight hundred feet. A rock thrown 
from the crest strikes unheard, far, far below, and is ground into 
dust. Passing this curve, theTallalula pursues its way, at sharp 
and often-recurring angles, through the mountains, but makes no 
more falls. 

Crossing Young's bridge in the evening, a walk of two miles 
brought us to Rock mountain. From here the world of moun- 
tains to come may be seen. There was no one with me to point 
out localities. I saw, it seemed, the outlines of a hundred moun- 
tains. Four distinct ranges lay in front of me, each receding 
range seeming higher. Behind me lay the hills I had passed 
over, and behind these the level country, broken only by the 
solitary peak of Currahee. At my feet could be seen the glitter- 
ing, winding, foaming shallows of the Tallula, and the roar of 
the falls alone broke the silence of the approaching night. The 
vast expanse, swept by a glass, bore scarcely a trace of human 
habitation. A few brown fields on the mountain-side, a single 
road (that from Toccoa), and a rising smoke from a distant val- 
ley, alone proclaimed that I was not on this high eminence the 
fiirst, like stout Balboa "upon the distant peak in Darien." Of 
course within this great circuit were the homes of hundreds of 
mountaineers, but they live in the deep valleys and beside the 
streams, and their humble improvements do not dot the high 
mountain which serves as a range for their diminutive, scrawny 
cattle and half-wild swine. The forest covering the mountains 



106 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

is a mixture of pine and other growth; the hue of the pine con- 
trasting with the other, like a dark figure in a carpet of bright 
green. 

In this high solitude I could have remained forever with the 
grand prospect, embracing as it does portions of four States: 
Mount Mitchell, the loftiest of the Atlantic coast mountains; 
Rabun Gap, the only pass to the southern coast above Chatta- 
nooga ; and many beauteous heights unknown to fame ; but as I 
looked the sun went down, the wind rose and brought with it 
higher and clearer the song of the falls, and stirred the leaves of 
the pine trees, which gave that suppressed sigh which only comes 
from the heart of the pine. Shadows of night crept on from the 
Atlantic, but a golden glow still rested over the West, the land of 
the Mississippi, of the great prairies, of the mysterious windings 
of the Missouri, of Kansas, the land of the future, of progress 
aud of hope. It was hard to leave it all, and it was black dark, 
broken only by the slender crescent of the new moon, when the 
hotel was reached again. But the hope of years had been at- 
tained. I had seen High Georgia. 

So far as I know, I was the first Kansan to register at the Falls 
of the Tallula, and nearly all the visitors I saw recorded for 
many months were Georgians ; yet hundreds and thousands of 
Northei'ners pass and repass through this country on their way to 
aud from Florida. At Toccoa, they are within two miles of one 
of the most beautiful cascades in the world. To Tallula Falls it 
is sixteen miles oVer a mountain road; but that is nothing to a 
genuine traveler. The people who growl about the nine rough 
miles necessary to reach the Mammoth Cave ought never to leave 
home. To the real traveler, willing to put up with inconven- 
iences, a bit of rough road or a scramble through laurel thickets 
or shelving rocks, the South affords a wonderful field. I should 
think people with a real love of nature would far prefer such 
scenes to painted and varnished watering-places. Had I the op- 
portunity, I could pass a month of happiness in traversing the 
mountains of North Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas ; all 
the road from the hospitable door of "Cousin John," at Toccoa, 
to Asbeville, North Carolina. 



HIGH GEORGIA. 107 

lu this long ride one would be disturbed by none of the ques- 
tions which agitate the rest of creation. If the traveler could 
leave behind him all brain-racking theories of his own, no new 
ones would be thrust upon him. It is a prevalent belief here 
that God made these mountains, but how or when only He knows, 
and the mountain people do not care. 

The curious delver in the earth can find here not only gold, 
but diamonds, opals and amethysts. The latter gem is very com- 
mon. Georgia is a land of wonders. 

The people have but one wish beyond making provision for the 
necessities of life, and that is the repeal of the whisky tax. 
These mountains are full of moonshiners, who regard themselves 
as persecuted men. The mountain still affords the only use or 
market for their corn, and they think it hard that they should be 
interfered with in a trade once counted lawful. They are poor 
people, and I should think that the tax, if collected, would 
amount to little above the cost of collecting it. As it is now, the 
expense of maintaining the army of revenue officers must far ex- 
ceed the sum realized by the Government. Whisky having al- 
ways been the enlivener of the mountaineer's heart, there was a 
touch of sadness in the following " notice," which I saw on the 
walls of an ex-saloon near Tallula Falls: 

" Soda Water Plenty to Drink. Tax Paid and a Free Con- 
trey." 

A"Contrey" free only to drink soda water, seems bitter 
mockery to a Northeast Georgian. 

In a previous letter I have suggested that the Kansas Edito- 
rial Association make its next tour by the Mammoth Cave and 
Lookout Mountain. I would now amend by adding that it ex- 
tend the trip to Atlanta, and thence by the Air Line to Toccoa 
and Tallula, and then "on to Richmond." 



Jo//: 



DOWN TO THE SEA. 



Savannah, Ga., May 3, 1881. 

Coming down from Toccoa City on a bright Sunday morning, 
I had a chance to see Georgia with its good clothes on. Tlie 
churches in the woods were surrounded with buggies and saddle 
horses. A large number of colored people boarded the train at 
one station, bound for a "big meetin'." They went where all 
the colored folks go in this country, in the smoking car, and 
were as happy as possible. I am quite sure that black should 
never have been adopted as the color of mourning, but rather as 
the emblem of rejoicing. The crow is a more jovial bird than 
the swan, and black people enjoy much more happiness to the 
square inch than white people. 

I had for a traveling companion between Toccoa- City and 
Atlanta a plainly-dressed, country-looking young fellow, a North 
Carolinian, who was the best-informed and cleverest talker I 
have met in the South. He was very proud of his State. South 
Carolinians get all the credit for this sort of glorification, but 
the much-laughed-at "tar-heel" is not a whit behind. This 
young man spoke in glowing terms of the prosperity of the 
State, and of his own town of Readsville, which he said had de- 
veloped into a great tobacco market. It is not far from the 
grazing-ground of Blackwell's celebrated "Durham." I am 
afraid my stay in the "old North State" will be short, and so I 
take the present opportunity of informing her friends in Kansas 
that she is doing well. 

Atlanta we saw again bathed in sunshine, and the morning re- 
vived a childish idea that the sun shone brighter on Sunday 
than on other days. And before I take leave of Atlanta I wish 
to add that the public library, of which I spoke in my last, is 
soon to come into possession of fifty thousand geological and 
other specimens from Florida, the gift of Mr. Postell ; and also, 
(108) 



DOWN TO THE SEA. 109 

that in "taking in" the city, I was greatly aided by Mr. Brophy, 
of the Constitution, who informed me that he manned the bul- 
wark of freedom, upheld the j)alladium of liberty, and lit the 
torch of civilization, in other words, at one time ran a weekly 
newspaper, in Kansas. 

Turning away from the " Gate City," we sped along the Geor- 
gia Central and passed through various villages which acquired 
a day's celebrity, and at last came to Jonesborough, a little town 
that I am likely to remember for a long time, for near it I once 
saw a bit of war. 

It was on just such another afternoon, I thought, that I saw 
Jonesborough first, and at about the same hour. How clearly 
the old afternoon came back, and the scene on which the old 
drama of war was enacted. There was a strip of woods just out 
of Jonesborough; in front of the woods, open fields, first inclin- 
ing, then rising again to another bit of forest facing the first. 
Then there was a road sheltered in part by this second forest, 
and on this road a column of our troops moving cautiously. In 
the edge of the first wood named was the Confederate works, and 
occasionally there came a puff" of smoke from the edge of the 
wood, and shells came hurtling over the troops, and finally be- 
gan to strike close and do damage. Then two guns were sent 
out into an open space facing the Confederate battery, and I 
heard an officer say: "Don't fire till they do, and then lam it into 
them." The "lamming" began presently. How the two guns 
did flash and roar, and how the shells burst right into the edge 
of the wood, and the smoke went up through the air in whirling, 
circling rings. Then, all at once, the troops in the road were 
gone, and our people were soon lying on their faces in front of 
the Confederate battery and line, and the Colonel alone stood up. 
Then there was a charge farther along in the open fields, and 
I saw the advancing line waver, and curve forward and back 
like the motion of a whip-lash. Three of our men broke and 
ran back into the fields and up the side of a hill, and an aveng- 
ing Confederate shell passed over the heads of hundreds, as if 
directed by fate, and tore two of the fugitives to fragments. 
Then the Colonel shouted "Forward!" and the long line of men 



110 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

rose up from the ground and dashed up to the works and over 
the battery in a minute, and that part of the fight was over. 

I remember, as our line passed on, the Confederate prisoners 
came running back through it to the rear, and one athletic young 
fellow was laughing like a maniac. Then we learned that the 
captured guns belonged to Goldthwaite's Mississippi Battery. 
The journal of the battery, kept almost up to the day of the bat- 
tle, fell into our hands. It was kept in a neat, clerkly hand, and 
I read the whole story. It was the story of brave men, and we 
added the last chapter ourselves. It was that the men of Gold- 
thwaite's Mississippi Battery stuck to their guns, and were captured 
"right there." Then came the awful part of it. Next day in a 
church — I thought I saw it again as I passed through Jones- 
borough — I saw the floor covered with the Confederate wounded. 
They lay on the floor, with nothing between it and their poor 
bones except some loose cotton. Men were there mangled and 
torn in every conceivable manner, their bandages stiffened with 
blood. It was horrible. 

Jonesborough did not seem larger than when I saw it last. It 
is one of the places foreordained to be slow and small, and a 
hundred years from now its environs will be sought for by anti- 
quarians in search of certain mounds of earth and depressions, 
and the oldest inhabitant will say that his father remembered 
that a battle had once been fought there. He is a very stupid 
man, no matter what his politics, who does not take an interest 
in the spot where a battle has been fought. The railroads of the 
South all understand this. In their circulars they tell you that 
their lines run through the scenes of "battles lost and won." 
The Western & Atlantic, one of the finest roads in the South, 
advertises itself as the "Kenesaw Route." Kenesaw is not in 
itself a remarkable mountain, but men look at it, and go a long 
way to do so, because brave meu climed in vain its bloody slopes, 
defended by the brave. 

F)om Jonesborough on I saw no names I knew personally, though 
Lovi joy station figured in one of our cavalry raids. Griffin looks 
prosperous and shady. It is said that Griffin was the most south- 
ern point reached by the "Uncle Tom's Cabin" combination. 



DOWX TO THE SEA. Ill 

At Griffin the company met the dead-line, and also eggs. I no- 
ticed that after "Guano," "Bar" was the most conspicuous sign 
in most of these towns. Fertilizer and destroyer seemed the 
principal objects of commerce, and the bars were so numerous 
that it seemed as if there were some truth in the sign I saw painted 
on a fence, "Everybody drinks Monongahela whisky." 

The farming country looked prosperous. We passed through 
a young orchard of five hundred trees. The cotton was just be- 
ginning to show in the rows, but the wheat grew green and strong. 
It occurred to me that a country which could grow cotton and 
wheat in adjoining fields, ought to prosper. I had some talk with 
an Ohio man, who was going to southern Georgia. He had tried 
farming in southern Virginia, near Petersburg. He admired the 
climate, and himself and other Northern men were treated very 
kindly by the people, but he could not make money. I told him 
uiy North Carolina friend had said that when the pines were cut 
down on the old fields that had rested for twenty years or so, the 
land brought very good cotton. The ex-Virginian thought other- 
wise. He gave me the details of a plan for making Southern 
land productive. If I got the idea, it was to sow cow peas be- 
tween the corn rows, and then plow the peas under, and keep this 
up year after year. I thought when a Kansas farmer had to plow 
one crop under to raise another, the exodus to "wife's folks" in 
Indiana would begin in earnest. Noticing the contented appear- 
ance of the colored people along the road, the Ohio man said he 
got along excellently with colored help in Virginia; by selecting 
good people and paying them promptly, there need be no diffi- 
culty, he thought. 

Dark and Macon were reached, and I decided to lay over at 
Macon, which I had never visited, and which is one of the most 
important towns in Georgia. 

Macon is noted for its streets. I shall never abuse Kansas 
avenue, in Topeka, again. Laid down in the middle of a Macon 
street it would be a cow-path. But then they are not particular 
about the streets in Macuu being used as such. They erect fire- 
engine houses in the middle of them, plant rows of trees in them, 
and in case there are forest trees, leave them standing. There 



112 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

need be no "additions" to Macon. By building a couple of blocks 
of houses down the middle of each street, any probable future 
population can be accommodated. 

In the most public place in the city, near the fine building 
which serves as the court house and post office, stands the Con- 
federate monument. It still bore the withering garlands of 
Decoration day. On a handsome pedestal stands a figure sup- 
posed to represent a Confederate soldier, holding his musket by 
the upper part of the barrel, the stock resting on the ground, and 
the whole figure bearing an air of attention. The monument, 
the inscription states, was erected by the ladies to the memory of 
the men of Bibb county and all others who died in support of 
the independence of the South. Panels bear the arms of the State 
of Georgia, and of the Coufederate States, a figure in the old 
Continental uniform, mounted on horseback, with the motto, Deo 
Vindici. 

The figure of the soldier is a very noble one, with a fine face. 
It was carved of purest white marble, in Italy. Some ex-Confed- 
erates whom I met criticised the statue, and said that they had 
heard that it had been duplicated in the North, for Union soldiers' 
monuments, and that it was not distinctly Confederate; that in- 
stead of the overcoat the figure should have worn a short jacket 
and a rolled blanket. Nevertheless, the statue suited me very 
well, and I am glad it stands there. It seemed to me the first 
and last thing seen in the town. I never turned a street corner 
without coming upon the tall white soldier and his musket. 

Let the soldier stand there at the crossing of the busy ways, 
white and noble in the sun or shade. He stands for thousands 
of the good and true who went from home followed by prayers and 
tears, and whose death brought a moveless shadow on the mourn- 
ful hearth. Let him stand there; I do not object, for he stands 
to mark where a cause fell, not where it started. It is the end, 
not the beginning. That monument is the last mile-stone on the 
journey of the ill-fated Confederacy. Let him stand there. The 
dead soldiers he commemorates are not more dead than the idea 
of a government among civilized men, the corner-stone of which 
shall be human slavery. Hour after hour pass and repass the 



DOWX TO THE SEA. 113 

living avidences of the futility of the struggle for what the monu- 
ment calls the "independence of the South." Every free black 
face that looks up at those marble lineaments is a witness of a 
cause so utterly lost that it can never be restored. Bravery, pat- 
riotism, freedom — these live; but the spirit that filled the graves 
this marble warrior marks, is as impotent now as the weapon he 
holds in his pulseless hands of stone. 

There was little to be found out about Macon, save that it has 
grown slowly as to population since the war, having now some 
12,600. It is a prominent cotton market, ranking among the first 
in Georgia. It is also a railroad center. I learned that its ear- 
liest settlers were Northern men who gathered to try their luck 
iu a new town. Quite a number of Northerners are in business 
in the city, including several ex-Union soldiers, and like many 
other Southern cities, Macon is becoming a winter resort for 
Northern people. I think the recollection of last winter's bliz- 
zards will crowd the South next winter. 

Speaking of Northern people, Georgia seems always to have 
been a favorite location for wandering Yankees. Long ago a 
New England colony started a town in South Carolina, and called 
it Dorchester. I believe some of the Sumners, connected with 
Charles Sumner's family, were in the movement. Eventually 
they removed to Liberty county, Georgia. A Macon gentleman, 
a Georgian, told me that when he was in college, there were more 
boys there from Liberty than from any other county. I am as- 
sured, however, that the descendants of these New Englanders 
were all secessionists of the most pronounced type. 

I had in Macon a long talk with Mr. Glover, the postmaster, 
a native of Georgia, originally a Whig, and since the war a Re- 
publican, He expressed the opinion, which I have heard every- 
where in the South, that the spirit of toleration is steadily in- 
creasing in the South. I asked him if the "Fool's Errand" was 
a correct picture of things as they once existed. He said that he 
had no doubt it was, in the district laid as the scene of the story. 
He had never seen things as bad in Georgia, though as late as 
1870, several base political murders had been committed in the 
State. For himself, he has fared very well; was treated with 



114 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

perfect kindness and courtesy by everybody, as much so as though 
his politics were different. The fires were pretty well laid now. 
Northern emigration was coming into the State; in Morgan and 
Greene counties there were many Northern farmers. As to the 
political future, nothing was said. Mr. Glover said that the 
carpet-bag Republicans believed that a Republican party could 
be built up on a foundation of blocks, but that the native Re- 
publicans had never entertained any such belief. 

Mr. Glover did not take as hopeful a view as many do, of the 
business condition of the South. He said the farmers were buy- 
ing their fertilizers and getting their bacon, which they ought to 
make themselves, from the North, and when these were paid for 
there was nothing left. He thought men who could make money 
in southern Indiana ought to make money in Georgia, and he 
wished they would come and try it. He seemed to look forward, 
rather sadly, after all, I thought, to the Northernizatiou of the 
South. He said the Southern system of railroads was rapidly 
passing into the hands of Northern capitalists; and the North 
would eventually "possess the laud." 

At dark I left Macon, which is on the edge of the low coun- 
try. I had just seen High Georgia; I had marched over Low 
Georgia, and remembering its monotony, did not wish to see it 
again. The train crept along all night, and when morning came, 
we were in the piney woods and the swamps, with the cypress 
trees, and the little clearings with white houses with picket fences 
around them. There were many rude shanties with black 
people standing in the doors, who looked as if they had just 
come from Africa. Then we came into a land that looked like 
Holland, low-lying and green. We had a glimpse of water and 
the rigging of ships. People were picking at long, green, high 
rows of peas; and a one-horse cart, with an old black woman 
"inside," and an old black man sitting on the shafts, toiled 
through the sand toward the town of Savannah. 



ci 



A SWING AROUND. 



Augusta, Ga., May 4, 1881. 

It was winter when I first visited Savannah, and a peculiarly- 
dark and soundless season. The column moved along the roads 
almost in silence, the usual tramp being lost in the deep sand. 
The skies were dim day after day; the occasional boom of a gun 
came faintly through the heavy air; the mournful murmur of 
the pines was overhead, and the Spanish moss swayed to and fro 
from the branches, reminding one of weeds and woe. I remem- 
ber that, to intensify the weird effect of all this, some "bummer" 
gave me that curious volume, De Quiucey's "Confession of an 
Opium-Eater," which I carried in my haversack, and read at 
halts, until I seemed to have caught the spirit of the author's 
dreams. To this day when I see the book it brings back the 
straight road through the pines, the arms stacked in line, the men 
sitting by the roadside, or lying in the sand with their knapsacks 
under their heads. 

Nothing exciting occurred at Savannah. The old regiment 
had its usual fortune. We were not in at Fort McAllister, and 
lay in front of a strong Confederate line of works, with a swamp 
in front of it, near a railroad — I do not remember which one — 
and the railroad was protected by a heavy battery. Just at a 
certain hour every evening a battery somewhere inside was ac- 
customed to fire a given number of solid shot into and around 
our camp, cutting off the limbs of the pine trees, but hurting no 
one. One day the battery failed to come to time. It had ad- 
journed sine die, and we went into Savannah. 

A deserted city is not bright under any sky, and the sun 
scarcely shone on Savannah in those January days. It struck me 
as the queerest and gloomiest place I had ever seen. There was 
one day a review of Kilkpatrick's cavalry, by Secretary Stan- 
ton, whom I then saw for the first and last time. He stood with 
(115) 



116 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

his uumoving, iron face, for hours, looking at the regiments file 
past. His plainness contrasted very strongly with "Kil.," who 
was as gay as a jaybird. 

Returning to Savannah the other day, I was a trifle astonished 
to find the sun bright and the city fairly glorious in its garb of 
summer. It made me think of the old song of the " Ivy Green," 
and I wandered about everywhere in the shade, trying to find 
remembered places. There had been little change in the build- 
ings, but a great change in the atmosphere and surroundings. It 
was a trifle aggravating to a man from Kansas, where we take 
such pains to make trees and blue-grass grow in the prairie towns, 
to see the happy and easy habits of Savannah vegetation. Some- 
thing green grows everywhere: in every chink in the high brick 
walls which shut in the grounds of old family residences; prom- 
ising shrubs are seen half-way up the sides of the houses, and 
every old roof is thatched with moss. 

Every visitor to Savannah remembers the old cemetery, once 
in the edge of the town, now in its center. It was abandoned as 
a place of sepulture years ago, and is full of the ancient history 
of Savannah. It is on one of the main streets of the town, and, 
passing, I found the gate open. It is full of sad old trees, and 
the ancient brick tombs were overgrown with briers and vines, 
which have obtained a foothold between the bricks. I wished to 
find again an epitaph which I had read years before. It recited 
that the "late lamented" was "killed in a duel," and this state- 
ment was followed by a most scathing denunciation of the other 
party to the duel ; but the revengeful old tombstone was gone. 
So I paused before an old stone, which marks the resting-place of 
a young Philadelphian, who, "in the 19th year of his age, when 
unarmed and peaceably walking in the streets of Savannah, was, 
on the evening of the 14th of November, 1811, attacked and inhu- 
manly assassinated by an armed banditti, belonging to the crews 
of the French privateers, 'La Vengeance,' and 'La Francaise.' " 
The inscription closed with these quaint lines: 

" Rest, hapless youth, far from thy friends inurned, 
By strangers honored and by strangers mourned; 
Though thy lone turf no kindred drops can lave, 
Yet virtue hallows with her tears thy grave." 



A SWING AROUND. 117 

It was a sudden transition from the past to the present; but 
going a little farther down the street, I saw something that might 
well have stirred the ashes of the departed. Observing a crowd 
of black people in front of an office, I saw what I have never 
seen, and am not likely to soon see in Kansas, a colored justice 
of the peace trying a case. He was a fine-looking man, Wood- 
house by name, and on the wall hung his commission, signed by 
Governor Colquitt, as Colonel of the First Battalion of the col- 
ored militia of the State of Georgia. He told me he was one of 
three justices of color in the city. I heard him mentioned several 
times by white people, never as the " negro justice," but as "Judge 
Woodhouse." The world moves a little, I think. Not far from 
the spot where I saw the Judge, I once picked up some legal 
papers in the case of the yacht " Wanderer," an American slaver, 
engaged, with perfect approval of a considerable number of 
American citizens, in the revival of the hideous African slave 
trade, only a few years before the war. 

There is something tropical about Savannah. The enormous 
number of trees, most of the principal streets having four rows 
of them, forming two long dark aisles of verdure; the profusion 
of flowers; the palmettoes, thrusting their fan-like leaves over 
the high brick walls; the iron-grated windows of the lower stories 
of the houses, as in Spanish countries — these all savor of the 
land of sun; but most of all, the negroes, of whom there are 
countless numbers. They spoke a dialect quite new to me; it 
it reminded me of broken French or Spanish; I suppose it was 
broken African. It was peculiarly noticeable among the boat- 
men from Beaufort, Hilton Head and thereabouts, who navigate 
their frail craft in the thousand creeks, bays, sounds and inlets 
of the Georgia and Carolina coasts. At one time I was minded 
to invest in a voyage to Hilton Head, but the colored mariner 
said he would not "go outside wid de corpse." I am not super- 
stitious, but I did not care to go to sea with a dead man for a fel- 
low-passenger. 

Savannah is a great commercial town — that is, for a Southern 
city; but its commerce is all its own. It is the second cotton 
port in the South, and at the railroad depots are immense cotton 



118 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

yards — great floored spaces — covered with flakes of cottou, for 
this is not the cotton-selling season, and a comparatively small 
amount of baled cotton was on hand. I also got interested in the 
rosin trade. Near the Florida Railroad depot were acres of rosin 
barrels. The inspector, Mr. Russell, told me that 300,000 bar- 
rels of rosiu were marketed annually in Savannah, and that he 
inspected 150,000 barrels. The inspection is a curious operation. 
The barrels are opened and the rosin broken up; then a man 
takes a specimen chunk and cuts from it a cube exactly an inch 
square for the inspector's use. The work of making these little 
blocks seems very rapid and easy, but it requires much practice, 
and is done with a little adze of hardened steel made for the pur- 
pose. There are twelve regular and fifteen intermediate grades 
of rosin. The finest grade is almost perfectly colorless, and one 
of the cubes dropped into a glass of water is hardly distinguisha- 
ble. The rosin marketed in Savannah is a Georgia production, 
and the business has grown up since the war. The pine in its 
diflferent varieties is a main-stay in the South. At Savannah 
large quantities of yellow-pine lumber are sawed, and many ships 
loaded with it. You hardly expect to find another Maine in the 
South, but the thing is possible. This State of Georgia ought to 
be richer than a dozen Californias. Suppose that we in Kansas 
could raise wheat in one field and cotton in the next, and in the 
woods next to that field could make rosin and turpentine, and 
then cut the trees down for dimension lumber: what xvould the 
real-estate agents say? Yet I suppose no Kansas man would 
give the Second Judicial District for all of Georgia. But we 
have not got through all Savannah's "things" yet. Going down 
an alley — they call them "lanes" in Savannah — I saw a yellow 
man unloading Spanish moss from a wagon. He said he owned 
a sloop and cruised along the coast as far as Doboy, and bought 
the moss from the people who gathered it, and made some money. 
This moss is the free gift of nature, just as a wisp of straw thrown 
up in a tree is anybody's property. 

In Savannah I struck politics in a mild form for the first time 
in the South. Mr. Waller, the acting editor of the News, dis- 
cussed a novel theme, the decision of the Electoral Commission 



A SWING AROUND. 119 

in the case of Mr. Hayes. But then Waller is from West Vir- 
ginia, and takes an interest in national questions. I don't be- 
lieve they care in Georgia whether Hayes was a "fraudulent 
President" or not. I also heard an old gentleman, in a genteel 
way, abuse Mahone and Gov. Brown. I also listened to a very 
funny triangular talk between a Republican, a leading business 
man of Savannah, and two of the opposition, also of Savannah. 
One of the latter, who was slightly under the influence of vinous 
irritation, started out by declaring that he was "a rebel," and 
wound up by saying that he was a "Southern Union man," and 
in favor of a "New South" — this being the only time I have 
heard the expression in this country. The other member of the 
opposition made several important admissions. He said that 
slavery was wrong, and the South ought to have gotten rid of it 
long before the war; and also, that when he was a boy he went 
to school in Massachusetts, and that he knew many good people 
there; he would not say that that was the general rule, but he 
knew there were some good people in that State. The debate 
was conducted with great humor, and was amusing, if not pro- 
found. 

Savannah has two public monuments, those of Gen. Greene, 
of Revolutionary memory, and a very beautiful one to Count 
Pulaski. How a little romance preserves a man's memory! 
Nathaniel Greene, the sou of a Rhode Island Quaker, was the 
ablest strategist of the American Revolution and a master mil- 
itary mind, yet his name is seldom rqentioned in Savannah, 
while everybody knows something of the brave Pole, Pulaski, 
whose services were far less valuable and conspicuous. 

Savannah, they told me, was flourishing. I only noted espe- 
cially that it was beautiful. I hope it will never change. I do 
not wish it to become another Atlanta. I do not wish them to 
macadamize its streets, but let them remain ankle-deep in soft 
black sand in which wheels make no sound. I hope my great- 
grandchildren, going to Savannah, will find everything as I 
found it, with all its live oaks and magnolias and elms where 
they are now, and the little green squares at the intersections of 
the streets just as Oglethorpe planned them, and filled with 



120 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

babies with their black nurses, and children of a little larger 
growth, playing just as I saw them play. Progress is a very good 
thing, but some things had better be left as they are, and Savan- 
nah is one of them. 

In the evening I went down the river eighteen miles to Tybee 
island, the favorite resort of Savannah people, and of Georgians 
generally. From the steamer's deck we look across low islands 
for the most part uncultivated, covered with rank grass and 
dotted here and there with the huts of an amphibious race of 
black people. In the lowest ground on the main shore was visi- 
ble the lighter green of rice fields, each with its rude Hoodgates. 
There is something dreary about these fields, and I do not wonder 
that they were associated in the mind with the darker horrors of 
slavery. Fort Jackson, an old mouldy brick fortification, was 
passed, and the remainder of the obstructions placed across the 
river by the Confederates during the war. Later, the white col- 
umn of Tybee lighthouse rose from the low-lying green of the 
island, and as the evening shadows fell, the pure radiance of the 
light shone over the waters, the lighthouse itself fading into the 
darkness, so that the light seemed hung in the lower sky like a 
star. Then there was the dim faint light of the new moon, the 
yellow gleam of the Tybee light; the red flash of a beacon; a dot 
of light here aud there, marking where some yet unseen ship lay 
at anchor, aud the clangor of a bell-buoy, rung by the waves, 
gave warning to the mariner. The island reached, a horse rail- 
way conveys the passenger to the line of hotel and cottages which 
line the Atlantic side of the island, where stretches a smooth beach 
for five miles. When morning came there was the level, sun-lit 
ocean, and clouds that told where Turner got his colors, and far 
out a lone ship that seemed a phantom of the deep. Nearer lay 
Fort Pulaski, a huge brick pile, built long ago at great cost. A 
modern war vessel with her powerful rifled guns could stand off 
out of range and reduce the old brick walls to crumbling frag- 
ments. I hope the experiment will never be tried. At six o'clock 
in the morning came the return up the river again to Savannah, 
an hour more in the old town, and then good-bye. 

To go from Savannah to Augusta by the Central road required 



A SWING AROUND. 121 

a doubling of that road, back as far as Millen, and if a traveler 
lias to go over that road twice I advise hira on his second trip to 
cultivate a talent for sleep. Nothing can be more monotonous 
than the succession of pine woods; I believe the prairie is less so. 
The train stopped occasionally, but no stations were called. I do 
not know that these stopping-places have any names. It was 
pleasant to come to Millen and a change of cars. A few people 
took dinner, and a very old lady came into the hotel and carried 
something to her sick son on the train. The conductor looked 
up from his plate, and said in a general way. "Do you see that 
old lady? It is so with all these Western people. They help 
themselves. Forty of them can get out of a car while three of 
ours are getting out and standing around in each other's way." 
He had been railroading in the South for twenty years, and prob- 
ably knew. 

The road from Millen to Augusta runs through but two coun- 
ties, Burke and Richmond. The former was once the banner 
cotton county of Georgia, and has three times as many blacks 
as whites in its population. 

My fellow-voyager this trip was an-evenue officer, a native of 
Georgia, a soldier in Longstreet's command, and a participant in 
the battle of Gettysburg and all the heavy battles in the East. 
He was a Republican; the only white Republican, he told me, 
within a hundred miles. 

He said he had been elected to a county office soon after the 
war, as a Republican, and had held a Federal office since. It 
was bitter medicine at first. Nobody had offered him personal 
violence, but his fellow-citizens cursed him as he passed. Every 
other white Republican in his vicinity (there were never over a 
dozen of them) had yielded to the pressure and gone over to the 
enemy. This sort of thing in its worst shape began to mitigate 
somewhat by 1871. During the last five years there had been 
an entire change. There was a time when it was difficult to get a 
white man to accept a position under the United States Govern- 
ment. He did not believe that one man in a hundred would now 
refuse one. He was once called a "scalawag." He now went 
his rounds and was treated with as much courtesy as if his poli- 



122 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

tics were different. There was no trouble, and little violation of 
the law. As United States Commissioner he had not had a case 
before him in eighteen months. 

Omitting my interrogatories, he went on to say that the talk 
about the "robbery and oppression" of the reconstruction gov- 
ernment iu Georgia was nonsense. They had brought Governor 
Bullock back to Georgia with handcuffs on, but they had proved 
nothing against him, and not long ago the Augusta Constitution- 
alist had said that Bullock was an honest man, and ought to have 
had a place in Garfield's Cabinet. Farrow, a member of the 
carpet-bag party, (though a native,) still lived in Atlanta, as did 
Bullock. No purer man had lived in Georgia thau Gen. Aker- 
man. Kimball, once bitterly deuouuced, was still the foremost 
citizen of Atlanta, and ran ahead of his ticket for mayor. He 
regarded Joe Brown as the head of the original reconstruction 
movement, and to-day he represents Georgia in the United States 
Senate. Not a Federal officer iu Georgia, native or carpet- 
bagger, had ever been a defaulter to the amount of a dollar. 

In regard to the future, the Republicans of Georgia were in 
this situation: If carpet-baggers led the movement it would fail; 
if it was attempted to organize a party of blacks, white men 
would not join it. The only chance for the blacks was two 
Democratic parties; and they could throw their weight with the 
wing that offered them the best treatment. He regarded Joe 
Brown as the. leader of the liberal wing of the Democrats, op- 
posed by old Toombs aud all the irreconcilables. For himself, 
he had stood by Brown, and he proposed to do so. He took the 
same rather melancholy view of the blacks that all native South- 
ern Republicans do, though he said there was a fair vote in his 
county last fall. He saw to that himself, and the county went 
for Garfield. Yet the blacks, unable to read or write, were un- 
able to organize themselves. He understood that the colored Re- 
publicans of Georgia were clamoring for recognition. He thought 
that about every black man capable of filling an office had one 
already. They were route agents, clerks in post offices, deputy 
collectors, and so ou. 

He believed the general idea of political toleration in the 



a'swing around. 123 

South was gaining ground. Thinking of Jeff. Davis's statement 
that he had never seen a reconstructed Southern woman, I ex- 
pressed my doubt as to whether the ladies would ever accept the 
situation. He said that he noticed that Northern men had no 
difficulty in marrying in the South — a'potent means of conver- 
sion. He knew of one case where great good had been done. 
An acquaintance of his, a Federal officer, had remained in the 
South after the war. He paid his attention to a Southern girl, 
and became eminently " solid." It was quite certain " Pa " would 
object; still the disbanded Federal waitedfon the old man, who 
said that no daughter of his should ever marry a Yankee, and 
proceeded to indulge in some fancy imprecations, whereupon the 
candidate for the position of son-in-law knocked the old gent 
over, and thumped him on both sides, and wound up the exer- 
cises with the observation, " Now, you old cuss, go home and tell 
your wife to go to baking cake. I am going to marry your 
daughter." The cake was baked on time. This was the last 
story I heard on the sacred soil of Georgia, for in the morning I 
shall, from this fair town of Augusta (of which I have something 
yet to say"), proceed to the invasion of the Carolinas. 



^\ ; A DROWSY CAPITAL. 

Columbia, S. C, May 5, 1881. 

At Augusta I took my leave of Georgia, after mauy a long 
mile's travel. I visited Atlanta, Macon, Savannah, and lastly 
Augusta itself, and saw something of Upper, Middle and Lower 
Georgia. 

With the exception of the wonderful mountain country in 
extreme northern Georgia, there is little in the State to interest 
the seeker after the picturesque. Yet every portion of the State 
is well worth a visit from the Northerner, if for nothing else than 
because the country affords such a contrast to his own. 

To Kansas eyes Georgia in all its parts looks barren, yet it is 
far from being so. It was before the war the "Empire State" of 
the South, and while it does not appear to be as fine a country as 
Tennessee, it will, with the advantage of the seaboard, doubtless 
continue to be the leading commercial State of the South. I 
found the State apparently prosperous, and although I was as- 
sured that the present mania for cotton planting would impover- 
ish the farmers, I still believe Georgia to be on the road to wealth. 
After hearing for many years the defenders of slavery. North and 
South, assert that cotton would be raised only by slave labor, I 
felt a singular satisfaction in hearing the same people declare 
that the South was being ruined by too much cotton raised by 
free labor. Neither statement, as it happens, was true. 

Of the political situation in Georgia, and of various other 
matters, I reserve what I have to say until a later date, perhaps 
until the conclusion of my wanderings, when all the evidence 
shall have been received. 

Coming up from Millen to Augusta, I had another opportunity 

to see how fallacious are the stories told about the South. I bad 

been told by both parties that since the war negro women did not 

work in the fields. One side regarded this as an evidence of im- 

(124) 



A DROWSY CAPITAL. j2o 

proveraeut, the other as the result of "nigger shiftlessness." As 
it happened, I saw black women and girls in nearly every field 
between Millen and Augusta, and have since seen them employed 
all the way from Augusta to Columbia. The colored renter, who 
takes land for a share of the crop, in the busy season puts his 
whole force in the field, his wife and all his children who are old 
enough; so those philanthropists who have been distressing them- 
selves with the fear that the young blacks of the South were 
growing up in idleness, may as well wipe their weeping eyes. 

Augusta is a beautiful town. Green street is regarded by every 
Georgian with commendable pride. Before Atlanta came into 
being, Augusta was regarded by the rural Georgian as the most 
splendid city on eartH, and to have visited Augusta entitled the 
back-countryman to the respect of his less-traveled neighbors. 
Augusta was very fortunate during the "troubles." One of the 
first cities in the South to declare for secession, it yet entirely es- 
caped occupation by our troops until the w^r was over, and has 
been steadily prosperous ever since. 

On the evening of my arrival, the Germans of several Georgia 
cities were enjoying a Schiitzenfest and the German flag was fly- 
ing from many business houses on Broad street, but I nowhere 
saw the American ensign, although I looked for it carefully, and 
even made inquiries if the stars and stripes had been seen in the 
vicinity. It was a new sort of Schiitzeni'est to me. I had never 
failed to see the flag of the Union displayed at any German dem- 
onstration in the North. Its absence at Augusta left me wonder- 
ing whether I was really in the United States, Germany, or the 
Empire of Georgia. In default of a sight of the flag which I 
had fondly supposed was the flag of Georgia as well as of the 
rest of this country, I had ample leisure to examine the Confed- 
erate monument in Broad street. It is, I believe, the finest pile 
yet reared to the Confederate dead. The Confederate soldier 
that crowns the summit is a fine piece of work, and more true to 
life than the Macon soldier of which I have spoken, save that 
the artist has given the soldier a cap. I never saw a Confeder- 
ate private soldier with a cap on. The inscriptions on the monu- 
ment would sound strangely to the readers of the Chavijyion, hut 



126 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

I did not wish to copy them. They relate not so much to the 
lost soldier as to the ''lost cause." I am sorry the brave men 
died; I am devoutly glad that their cause perished from the 
earth. 

There are two Augustas. Walkiug along Broad or Green, or 
any of the long aisles of trees, lined with pretty, white, rose- 
embowered houses, you would suppose that Augusta was a rich, 
leisurely old Southern town, with nothing to do, but by going to 
the suburbs you find yourself in the midst of long rows of cotton 
factories — long, high brick structures, with quite a New England 
look. 

The Augusta canal, which takes water from the Savannah for 
manufacturing purposes, is nine miles long, 150 feet wide at the 
top and 106 feet at the bottom, with eleven feet depth of water. 
Taken from the canal, it makes two falls before reaching the 
river, thus affording room for two lines of factories. The com- 
bined fall at the Enterprise mills is thirty-two feet. The esti- 
mated horse-power is 14,000. 

I visited the Enterprise mills, one of the smaller factories, and 
happened to be at the mill when the two hundred hands quit 
work for the night. They were all, I found, recruited from the 
piney-woods population. Out of the possible 2,000 hands era- 
ployed in the Augusta factories, scarcely any are foreigners. I 
have always believed that the "poor white" of the South would 
not work, but many of the faces of those who passed me bore the 
unmistakable "cracker" look. I presume the mass of the girls 
are the daughters of small farmers, but there were certainly some 
who came from the clay-eater class, who in their native woods 
own nothing and do nothing. The superintendent of the mill 
told me that the country people liked to work in the mills. 
They earn more than they could possible do on the red-clay hills 
among the broom sedge; and do not shrink from the confine- 
ment, since they have not a naturally roving or adventurous dis- 
position. I noticed very young boys employed, and one mother 
had her baby, just able to walk, toddling around, rather reck- 
lessly, I thought, among the machinery. The mills support many 
poor families, and widows with young children. 



A DROWSY CAPITAL. 127 

The growth of factories will be a great blessing to the South; 
yet I wondered if, with such material for help, there would not 
grow up such a system as fills the alleys of great mauufacturiog 
towns in England with very wretched people. The girls I saw 
in the Augusta factories did not resemble those who for years 
kept up the ''Lowell Offering," the organ of the factory girls of 
Lowell, Massachusetts; nor did they resemble the young ladies 
who were my teachers in boyhood, who earned the money to ob- 
tain an education in New England factories. Yet anything, al- 
most, is better than to be a snufF-dippiug, piney-woods woman. 

The oldest of the factories at Augusta is the "Augusta." It was 
started many years ago, by Southern men and money. Not over 
$50,000 of the capital stock was ever paid in, yet it has paid enor- 
mous dividends, and the property is now valued at at least a mil- 
lion dollars. This factory steadily made money during the war, 
in spite of the worthlessness of Confederate currency. It now 
employs 24,000 spindles and 800 looms. The Enterprise has 
13,892 spindles and 264 looms. The Richmond has 8,400 spin- 
dles. The Globe mills had 1,500 spindles in 1878, and is increas- 
ing its capacity. The Riverside, Summerville and Sibley mills, 
the latter an enormous affair, are now being built. The capital, I 
was told, is furnished in about equal proportions by North and 
South. Charleston has considerable money invested. 

Returning to the city, I walked through a street lined by the 
brick houses occupied by the "Augusta" mill-hands. They were 
formerly furnished free to operatives, but the company now re- 
quires $1 a month per room as rent. There is a free school near 
by, for the factory children. 

My ramble among the factories lasted till it was quite dark. 
At supper at the hotel I listened to two gentlemen who were dis- 
cussing the trial and conviction that day of a black man for the 
murder of a white man. One of them, I judged, had been a 
juror in the case. He did not know that I was from the North, 
yet he alluded to the belief in our section that a black man does 
not have his rights in a Southern country. He said that in this 
case the murderer had had a second trial; that able counsel had 
been assigned him, and that his own confession had been ruled 



128 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

out. It seemed to me that everythiug had been doue that could 
be asked. The murder was a brutal one, committed for money, 
h^ a low, ignorant creature. I was struck by the gentleman's 
allusion. There is such a thing as a public conscience. The 
South is very sensitive, I think, to Northern criticism. I regard 
it as a good indication. 

Early in the morning I took the Augusta, Columbia & Char- 
lotte road for Columbia. I wished to visit Columbia principally 
to see any remains, if they existed, or to listen to the traditions, 
if there were any, of the singular government of carpet-baggers 
and blacks, of which Columbia was once the seat. I had always 
suspected that both sides lied plentifully and profanely about the 
government, and it occurred to me that a few grains of truth 
might be picked up "on the spot." 

As usual, I looked about on the train for some one to converse 
with, and found an excellent witness. I wish his kind were 
more plentiful in the South. I should have more hopes of its 
regeneration. He was a business man, the cashier of a national 
bank at Newberry; a native of South Carolina, as was his father 
before him; not allied, as he himself assured me, to the aristoc- 
racy of the country; trained from the first to business, worship- 
ping his Creator in the days of his youth, and not the sover- 
eignty of South Carolina; a Demoorat, because he thought it 
decent and respectable in South Carolina to be such; and a 
Christian of the Baptist denomination. He went with me from 
Augusta all the way to Columbia, and I am indebted to him for 
much information about the country. 

We crossed the Savannah at Augusta, and entered Hamburg. 
It is a wretched, mouldy place, crowded between the bluff and 
the river; a place full of rats, I should think. I would hate to 
go about it after dark. It was once a business town, but was 
overshadowed and crushed out by Augusta. The remains look 
very unwholesome, but will probably incumber the South for 
some time, linked with the hateful word, " massacre." 

Emerging from purgatory, or the next station below, we came 
to heaven at Graniteville, the prettiest manufacturing village I 
ever saw. My companion, whom I will call Mr. Newberry, said 



A DROWSY CAPITAL. 129 

it was established mauy years ago by a gentleraau named Gregg, 
from Charlestou, who employed the hill people, started a school 
as well as a cotton mill, and enforced very rigid regulations re- 
specting the morals of his operatives. Mr. N. said the system 
worked a complete transformation in the people. The mills were 
situated in a little shady valley on the banks of Horse creek. 
Along the side of the hill ran a street, dark with the shade of 
tree^, and lined with residences covered in front with white climb- 
ing roses fit to bloom in paradise. Farther away, as the train 
moved on, I saw the factory villages, the sharp roofs of the frame 
cottages peering above the trees. What a contrast, this, to the 
narrow, dark alleys, the cobble-paved streets, the grim rows of 
smoky brick houses of a manufacturing town in the North or in 
England. And then the climate. Who that has seen the shiv- 
ering crowds called out by the clang of the factory bell before 
light of a bitter, wintry morning, but will appreciate the differ- 
ence between that, and this laud where it never snows. But to 
travel on, we came to another factory, at a place called Vaucluse, 
(I am not positive about the spelling,) a sort of offshoot of Gran- 
iteville. Mr. Newberry said that factories of the first class were 
being built at Spartanburg, Williamston and Piedmont; a steam 
factory was to be built at Charleston, and an effort made to em- 
ploy the water power at Columbia. 

We ran on the carpet-bag breakers immediately. I happened 
to use the word "district," when ray man said: "That was the 
old name, but the government we had set up over us a few years 
ago, without any reason changed it to 'county.'" This was a 
starter. I intimated that I would be glad to get the whole story, 
and before we reached Columbia, I was iu possession of it. 

The charges of stealing, it seemed to me, were rather vague. 
He said enormous taxes were raised and squandered. I did not 
learn how. He said Moses and Scott were thorough rascals. 
Moses the younger was a native Carolinian, and a villain from 
his birth. Governor Chamberlain was a gentleman in appear- 
ance, a fine scholar, and originally possessed of good intentions. 
He came South, said my candid friend, expecting to find a decent 
Republican party, composed of respectable people, such as exists 



130 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

in the North ; but there was no such party in South Carolina. It 
was made up of negroes, densely ignorant, and led by bad white 
men. Governor Chamberlain could not shake off this party or 
rise above it. Mr. Newberry said, further, that he did not be- 
lieve that Chamberlain took any amount of money away with him. 
He went on, and spoke of the question of social proscription for 
opinion's sake. He said that a RQpublicau officeholder in his 
county, who had lately gone to Kansas, was burned out, but it 
was on account, not of his politics, but of his low moral stand- 
ing, his relations with negro women, and so on; but said my in- 
formant, "a more correct and honest public officer I have never 
known." I thought the clause proscribing a man for the pater- 
nity of mulattoes, must have been inserted in the South Carolina 
code since the war; but I kept my reflections to myself, and my 
mentor went on to say that Dr. Goodspeed, of Columbia, a good 
man, and a Baptist like himself, was held on the outside to some 
extent because he was engaged in the instruction of colored youth, 
but he did not think that right; he would not proscribe Dr. Good- 
speed himself; but allowance must be made for the prejudices of 
a lifetime. The time would come, he thought, when no barrier 
would meet such men as Dr. Goodspeed. 

Mr. Newberry spoke of the occupation of the country after 
the war by the Federal troops. A garrison for a long time oc- 
cupied Newberry. The officers were gentlemen, and no trouble 
was occasioned by the presence of soldiers. In regard to the 
troubles, reference was only made to the Hamburg massacre. He 
said the whites were greatly provoked and exasperated, but that 
the killing of the blacks after they were prisoners was entirely 
unjustifiable. 

Of course a conversation with an "office-bearer" in the church, 
as Mr. Newberry was, took a religious turn at times. A better 
feeling exists between black and white churches of the same faith 
than I supposed ; and here I may say that I think the South a 
more religious country than the North. I mean by that, that it 
is more orthodox, and more reverence is felt for what may be 
called the established religion. People are nearly all Baptists, 
or Methodists, or Presbyterians, or Episcopalians. There are few 



A DROWSY CAPITAL. 131 

Freethinkers and Liberals. Bob Ingersoll could never flourish 
down here. Father Scanlan, the acting Bishop of Nashville, 
told me that, outside of the Catholic church, there was little be- 
lief in religion among the educated classes in the South. Father 
Scanlan was mistaken. It is a very believing country. We of 
the North regarded the Southern Confederacy as a progeny of 
hell, but never was any cause supported more earnestly by the 
religious people of a country. Never was a cause more earnestly 
commended to the favor of heaven. 

South Carolina when I saw it last was a forlorn region, and its 
forlornness did not seem the result of war so much as of natural 
sterility. I found it much improved. A plateau between Au- 
gusta and Columbia called "the Ridge," was the best cultivated 
country I have seen in the South, and more new houses were being 
built than I have seen elsewhere. Mr. Newberry said that Ridge 
Springs " looked like a New England village." New England ap- 
pears to be the symbol of thrift down here. 

Columbia lies on a high ridge overlooking the Congoose river. 
The ridge is flat on top, and long level streets run across the top 
and climb up and down the sides the best way they can. Colum- 
bia is not a very ancient place, and, like most towns built for State 
capitals, is a stupid place. The hours passed here have been 
among the dullest of my life. St. Louis could not have been 
worse. 

There are some beautiful streets, for which one may thank God, 
since man here has only to set out trees and flowers and Provi- 
dence does the rest. The streets do not look like streets, but like 
green alleys in the forest. On one of the finest is the house 
once owned by Gen. Wade Hampton. The original structure 
was built by his grandfather, Gen. Wade Hampton of Revolu- 
tionary celebrity. It is now the property of Mr. Dodge, of 
Phelps, Dodge & Co., of New York, whose family live here a 
few months in the year. Mr. Dodge made his money originally, 
I believe, in tin and sheet-iron. Possibly the South Carolina soul 
may grieve because a "Yankee tinner" now owns the' ancestral 
halls of the Hamptons and the Prestons, but the house has had 
a much worse fate. It was occupied at one time by the natiVe 



132 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

South Carolina thief, Frauk Moses. The house is a rooray, old- 
fashioned structure, the garden the most beautiful private ground 
I have ever seen. The whole cannot have cost less than $100,- 
000. It was sold, I have heard, to Mr. Dodge for $15,000. Gen. 
Hampton lives in the country, and is poor. Gen. Preston, who 
occupied the residence at one time, was buried a few days ago. 
He was a fine scholar, a great orator, and the most determined 
enemy that this Union ever had. Opposite the Hampton house 
is an old-established Presbyterian theological seminary. The 
trloomy, decayed brick buildings are now closed. 

There is but one business street in Columbia — Main street. It 
was burned by the soldiers of General Sherman's command. 
General Sherman thinks differently. Our own corps did not enter 
the town, consequently I did not see the burning. But I remem- 
ber well enough the night when our command crossed the Savan- 
nah at Sisters Ferry, the loud, long vengeful yell, that rose as 
company after company stepped upon South Carolina soil. The 
men felt that South Carolina was the cause of the war and all 
the suffering it had brought. They did not love South Carolina, 
and it is said that if certain men who had been inhumanly treated 
as prisoners of war ever got to Columbia, they would burn the 
town. I should not be at all surprised to learn definitely that 
they did. 

Whoever did the burning, it was done, and great gaps on Main 
street show to this day how complete was the destruction. The 
Government has erected a fine building on the street for a post- 
ofiice, etc., and it is the only fine public building. 

The former capitol of South Carolina has entirely disappeared. 
I was obliged to ask where it once stood. Not a vestige remains. 
The new capitol, the walls of which were carried up some dis- 
tance when the old one was burned, was roofed in, and presents, 
with its partly wooden facade, an unsightly spectacle. Columns 
and capitals are piled around it, and a large quantity of marble 
that escaped the fire is stored away in the basement. The State 
does not propose to finish the building. 

I went into the State Library, and found a wreck of ancient 
.South Carolina in the Librarian. He was an old Rip -Van- 



A DROWSY CAPITAL. 133 

Wiukle-looking person, and hated Yankees, carpet-baggers and 
niggers. He said he had a hundred niggers when the war broke 
out, and he had worked like a dog to pay for them, and they had 
all gone. Sherman had burned two houses for him also. I sat 
and looked out on the sleepy old town while he detailed the situ- 
ation. Sherman's soldiers set fire to the town ; he saw them 
do it. He supposed they were ordered to; if not, why did they 
do it? It was in his room that "Old Bond" tried the Ku-Klux. 
Was he a good judge? Well, he had a pretty hard face on him. 
Did the Ku-Klux have a fair trial? Well, he hardly thought 
they had. Were they guilty of anything? No; they never killed 
anyone; that was all a lie in the Northern papers; he supposed 
the niggers took their stock, and they went around to their houses 
and whipped 'em like the devil — that was all. What sort of a 
man was Governor Chamberlain? Oh, he was a very bad man, 
but he was as plausible a man as you ever saw, and looked like a 
saint; but he was a bad man, and stole a great deal of money 
and went away with it. He came to South Carolina as a clerk 
on a rice plantation, and he had a pretty good education, and so 
got to be Governor. What sort of a man was Mr. Wilder, the 
postmaster at Columbia? He was a very orderly, peaceable nig- 
ger; he had to have a white man to do the duty of the office for 
him. And so he went on. 

He brought me a copy of the proceedings of the constitutional 
convention of 1868, and a copy of the investigation into the elec- 
tion of Patterson as United States Senator, The report of the 
convention was verbatim, and there was a good deal of smart nigger 
talk in it. The constitution seemed well enough. From a hasty 
look at the investigation, I judged that the honorable members 
smoked a good many cigars and drank a good deal of whisky at 
the expense of the State. I judge that Patterson spent his money 
in a very direct fashion. It was bad enough, doubtless, 

I walked out of the building and looked at a bronze statue of 
Washington in the vestibule. It was very old, and made Wash- 
ington look like a bumpkin. The old man did not know who was 
the artist. He only knew that the niggers got into a row one day 
and broke the cane off, 
9 



]34 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

It was raelaucholy. lu the noon sun lay the flat, empty street; 
no signs or sounds of business were visible. Here was the mar- 
ble monument to the Confederate dead; opposite was a monument 
in the shape of an iron palmetto tree, to the dead of South Car- 
lina in the war with Mexico; here was the unfinished eapitol, and 
the bronze Washington with the broken cane. As if in mockery, 
some one had set up beside the entrance of the State House a 
cage with three owls in it, and here was the old man who had 
lost a hundred niggers that he had worked like a dog to pay for. 
I longed for something more cheerful, and asked the old man if 
he would have the kindness to show me the way to the peniten- 
tiary. He did so, and I left the eapitol with its unfragraut mem- 
ories and its blinking owls, I think forever. 

The penitentiary is a new institution, founded in 1867. In the 
good old times they hung people for most oftenses against the law, 
and so the county jails were sufficient for the purpose of confin- 
ing the few criminals who were not hung. At present there are 
600 State prisoners. Three hundred of these are farmed out to 
railroad and other contractors ; the remainder are kept at the 
prison. It was a rude sort of slab arrangement; the cell doors 
opening into the prison yard. The prisoners, who were nearly all of 
a deep, beautiful glossy black complexion, were working at weav- 
ing prison-cloth on looms that Adam might have made for Eve, 
shoe-making, and other like employments. Some were building 
a new wall about the prison, some were gardening, some sat 
around and talked to each other; there seemed to be no restric- 
tion on conversation. The wooden buildings were very rough ; 
everything was clean, and the prisoners seemed well treated. The 
guards wore a gray uniform. 

A fine home gone from its ancestral owners into the hands of 
strangers; an unfinished State House and a prison — these con- 
stituted the "sights" of Columbia as I saw them. 

I much wished to see a member of the old State Government, 
a carpet-bagger, or one of the colored statesmen, but I was in- 
formed that they had nearly all disappeared. Beverly Nash, a 
black orator who figured in the Constitutional Convention, was 
said to be somewhere in the vicinity, and I heard often of a Gen. 



A DROWSY CAPITAL. 135 

C. J. Stolbrand. If I mistake not, this officer was at one time 
stationed at Fort Leavenworth. C. G. Cox, formerly of Junc- 
tion City, used to tell some funny stories of the "hyperborean," 
as he was accustomed to call him. 



/ 

c./, SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS. 

Charlotte, N. C, May 6. 1881. 

Columbia held out as it began. The last thiug I noticed in the 
august capital of South Carolina was a "cracker" driving on the 
main street a two-wheeled cart, containing one-sixth of a cord of 
crooked oak wood, the shaky cart being drawn by one dilapidated 
ox. 

Boarding the train for Charlotte, my attention was attracted 
by the appearance and conversation of a gentleman opposite. He 
had a thin face, like the late Lord Beaconsfield, piercing black 
eyes, a rather Hebraic nose, and a physiognomy remarkable for 
what might be called its ugly attractiveness. He began talking 
at oncg, with the air of a professional talker, and becoming in- 
terested, I shortly afterwards introduced myself to the Hon. 
Thomas J. Mackey, Judge of the Sixth Judicial Circuit of South 
Carolina. .» 

The Judge immediately introduced me in turn to the Hon, B. 
H. Massey, one of the Penitentiary Commissioners of the State 
of South Carolina, who he informed me was the author of the 
law passed two years ago, forbidding the intermarriage of whites 
and blacks, under penalty of long imprisonment. I expressed 
some surprise that such a law should be needed in South Caro- 
lina. The Judge told me it was needed ; that low-down whites 
were marrying negroes, a hundred cases having occurred in a 
year, and that the law was to prevent "the debauching of the 
race." I ventured to ask in case of such a marriage which race 
was "debauched." "The white race, sir; the white race. A 
white man in hell is better than a negro archangel," was the 
reply. 

This was the key-note to a long conversation, which was in 
hearing of a car full of people, and so was in no sense confiden- 
tial. I found the Judge a very entertaining fellow-traveler. He 
had been all over the West; had served with Mayne Reid, the 
(136) 



SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS. 137 

novelist, in the Mexican war; had hunted buffalo on the Platte, 
and served as chief engineer on the staff of Gen. Sterling Price, 
and gave me a very graphic account of the fight at Pilot Knob. 
Like most brilliant talkers, his statements were occasionally con- 
tradictory, and he took positions from which he retreated, but as 
a whole I regarded his talk as instructive. 

Mention was made of Frye's speech in the Senate. I had not 
read it, and asked what Mr. Frye wanted. " Oh," said the Judge, 
"he wants the majority to rule, but it does not rule in South Car- 
olina, nor shall it rule " He said that when the white race paid 
97 per cent, of the taxes, and had 99 per cent, of the intelligence, 
it would do 75 per cent, of the voting, and nothing could pre- 
vent it. You might fill South Carolina with troops, and the 
result would be the same. The whites would exterminate the 
blacks, if it were necessary. I asked if the blacks did not vote 
in South Carolina. "They vote," was the answer, "but the ma- 
jority is not counted. Their vote only embarrasses the judges of 
the elections." 

The negro, my political instructor informed me, was a good 
hand in the fields, but in a government he was a destructive 
force. He had no moral sense nor virtue. Yet his offenses were 
of a petty order. Hearing a rooster crow in the woods, on Sat- 
urday, he would move' in a bee line four miles through the woods 
on that bird, and incorporate him into his physical system on 
Sunday at dinner-time. A white man going that distance would 
at least rob a store of all its contents before returning. The 
negro, in short, was a sort of half-brute, born to steal, lie, get 
drunk, and occasionally "get" a religion which made him worse 
instead of better. I inquired if there was no prospect of the 
negro being a better voter in the future, under the influence of 
education. No, education did not make men better voters. He 
would have the negro taught to read, write and cipher, so as to 
protect himself from being cheated, but no more. He would 
never be any better qualified as a voter. This was the general 
tenor of the Judge's talk. Generally he spoke of the blacks 
with a bitterness I heard from no other man in the South. 

He said, incidentally, that the "Fool's Errand" was a true 



138 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

«tory. That he had been requested to answer it, but reading it 
through, he found it substantially correct. I asked him his opin- 
ion of Gov. Chamberlain. He said that no act of official cor- 
ruption had ever been traced to him. That matter had been 
judicially determined and settled. As to his ability, it was first- 
class. He was the ablest man who had ever been Governor of 
South Carolina. 

A car with a picnic party had been attached at Columbia, 
bound for Winnsboro. As we pulled up to Winnsboro, a mili- 
tary company was drawn up on the depot platform to receive the 
young ladies. Just as we passed a large residence near Winns- 
boro, a black boy came out and waved a Confederate battle-flag 
at the train. The Judge, Mr. Massey and myself happened to see 
it at the same moment. The Judge was evidently irritated. As 
usual, he held the darkey responsible, and said he ought to have fif- 
teen lashes for doing such a thing. But the absurdity of this was so 
apparent that he said further that "nobody but a hare-brained 
fool, like , would have it done;" that the military com- 
panies of the State always carried the flag of the United States. 
It happened that I had seen the Governor's Guards parade at 
Columbia the day before, without it. I told the Judge about the 
Schi'itzenfest at Augusta, and said that while a flag might be only 
a piece of cloth, it meant a great deal more to a Northern man. 
That it was just such 'hare-brained fools" as his fellow-citizen 
who sent out a Confederate flag to be waved in the face of North- 
ern men traveling through the country, that kept up the feeling 
between the sections ; and that a Northern Union man, before he 
would remove to a country where the Union flag was not seen, 
and the Confederate flag was ostentatiously displayed, would mi- 
grate in preference to the sulphur hills and flaming brimstone 
plains of perdition. 

The tone of the South Carolina portion of the audience was 
perceptibly changed after the display of the ancient banner of 
the Confederacy, and thereafter we conversed about the Revolu- 
tionary history of the locality. The Judge pointed out to me the 
house in AVinnsboro occupied by Lord Cornwallis as headquar- 
ters, and from whence he marched to attack Gates at Camden. 



SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS. 139 

He had previously pointed out Anvil Rock, where Tarleton, the 
bloody British dragoon, encamped at one time. 

At Chester the Judge left us, and thereafter the Penitentiary 
Commissioner devoted himself to my enlightenment. 

He was a planter from the banks of the Catawba ; a man of 
substance, a farmer from his youth, and of ordinary education. 
He was extremely conservative and conciliatory in his talk, and 
evidently did not wish me to take the Judge, with his brilliant 
bitterness, as a representatiye of the South Carolina sentiment. 
We first spoke of the penitentiary. He deplored the practice 
of farming out the prisoners, and said that as the State grew 
better off the prisoners were being brought in, and it was hoped 
in time to keep them all in the prison. He explained that Judge 
Mackey was a convert from Radicalism, and had been at one 
time hand-in-glove with the negro and carpet-bag government. 
This confirmed an ancient saying to the effect that "one renegade 
is worse than ten Turks." 

The gentleman now in hand said that nothing had ever been 
proven against the official character of Gov. Chamberlain. " AVe 
could not fasten anything on him." This settled a belief of 
mine, that of all the men who have been mixed up in Southern 
affairs. Gov. Chamberlain has been the most infamously treated. 
Beset by Bourbons on one hand, and a lot of Senegambian plun- 
derers and native white rascals, of whose greed and rapacity the 
Northern mind can hardly conceive, on the other, and denounced 
with the rest of the carpet-baggers by a lot of fine-haired Re- 
publican newspapers in the North, he had very hard measure 
dealt out to him. Yet my informant told me that he was a mem- 
ber of the Democratic State Executive Committee which decided 
to call a State convention ; that the proposition was carried by a 
few votes; that the majority of the party at that time favored 
Chamberlain ; and that at first scarcely a Democratic paper sus- 
tained the action of the committee. A more conciliatory dispo- 
sition than that of Mr. M., I have not met lately. He believed 
in peace; in popular education for white and black; and, rather 
unexpectedly, the elevation of black men to office. He said 
there were several colored members in the last Legislature, and 
that he believed it would be policy for the dominant party to 



140 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

elect more of then}. I may say that a similar idea was advanced 
by the gentleman I have spoken of in a previous letter as " Mr. 
Newberry." This rather took the wind out of the Judge's ulti- 
matum. "In South Carolina," said he, "it is not a question of 
Democrat against Republican; it is a question of race against 
race." But the "race" theory goes up whenever a black man is 
elected to office. 

Such are the diversities of political policy or sentiment that 
one meets in the South. I have cited in South Carolina four 
witnesses. Believing two of them, I should say that "hating 
niggers" was the chief end of existence in South Carolina. Be- 
lieving the other two, one could well believe iu a New South; in 
an era of justice to the blacks, and toleration for everybody. I 
am satisfied that among the bone and sinew of the country the 
latter sentiment is gaining. When it will be the strongest no one 
can tell. 

I parted with South Carolina and my planter statesman at 
about the same time, but not until he had pointed out to me, 
with much satisfaction, the new cotton mill at Rock Hill, soon 
to be opened, running 6,000 spindles and built by South Carolina 
capital. That mill and every mill I saw seemed an omen of 
better days. When I parted with Mr. M. it was with a regret 
on his part, that I could not remain to attend the Cowpens cele- 
bration, to which I see President Garfield has accepted an invi 
tation, and a regret on my part that I could not go down to the 
old plantation on the Catawba, or the Wateree as it is called 
lower down, and ramble around among the hills where Briton and 
American, Whig and Tory, Tarleton and Sumter, all of whom 
honest old Horry writes, fought their fights and rode their forays. 
But time did not permit, and so I suppose I must some day take 
Lossing's "Field Book" and read about it. 

It is hard to overcome old prejudices, and I have always en- 
tertained one against South Carolina. Since the Revolution I do 
not know a name in her annals which has ever attracted my affec- 
tion or respect. Mr. Calhoun I have always regarded as the evil 
genius of the politics of his time — all the more dangerous be-- 
cause of his great ability and his exemplary personal character. 
My personal knowledge of her statesmen began in the era of the 



SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS. 141 

Hammonds, who invented the term "mudsill" as a reproach to 
white laborers; with the Brookses and the Keitts, the swash- 
bucklers and bullies who disgraced the councils of the Nation 
and the human race at Washington when I was a boy. The 
very emblem of the State, the palmetto, I have always regarded 
as a sort of vegetable fraud — an elongated cabbage trying to be 
a tree, and at best succeeding in being, as its name implies, a little 
palm. What I saw of the State during the war confirmed the 
old contempt. There was not a square-out battle fought on her 
soil. The last field of the Confederacy was Bentonville, North 
Carolina, where the "Tar-heel," dragged out of the Union against 
his will, exhibited once more his patient valor. I do not now re- 
call a great name furnished the Confederate cause by South Car- 
olina. 

Let the past go, however, is the word for to-day. If Mother 
Shipton is not correct. South Carolina has yet a chance, and I 
believe sees it. The son of Senator Hammond, I was told, is now 
preparing a work on cotton, its history, culture and manufacture, 
with a view of especially advertising the advantages of the State. 
This is better work than his father did. The Brookses and the 
Keitts are dead. The old race of nullifiers and irreconcilables and 
secessionists, who roused the wrath of Jackson and vexed the soul 
of Lincoln, have passed and are passing away. They have lost 
statesmen in South Carolina, but they have discovered phosphates, 
which are far more valuable There is hope for the old land yet. 
The agricultural portion of the country seemed improving. There 
was a good deal of new land in cultivation; the growth of the 
manufacturing interest I have mentioned, and that is a comfort. 
We will remember Graniteville and Langley and Vaucluse and 
Rock Hill, and forget Hamburg and Columbia. 

In the middle of the afternoon we came into the ancient town 
of Charlotte, in the county of Mecklenberg and in the State of 
North Carolina; but I will not speak of North Carolina now, but, 
out of respect to the doctrine of the sole independence and sov- 
ereignty of the State of South Carolina, will leave her all alone 
in a letter by herself. 



JTo 



Cr^^i-- 



IN NORTH CAROLINA. 



Richmond, Va., May 7, 1881. 

The old town of Charlotte was named, I believe, after the 
Queen of George III, a very clever old lady who raised a large 
family of children, and who was accustomed to accompany her 
husband, "Farmer George," about the lanes and alleys of Wind- 
sor, talking with the cottagers, and inquiring what they were 
going to have for dinner. Yet this loyally-named town of Char- 
lotte was one of the first in America to give his Sacred Majesty 
trouble, for "here was drawn up the famous "Mecklenburg Dec- 
laration," which led the Philadelphia 4th-of-July document by 
a considerable time, and it was a very stirring "declaration," 
although neither Thomas Jefferson nor Thomas Paine drew it up. 
As a matter of course, the first substantial citizen whom I asked 
for the "points" of his town, told me where stood the old log 
court house where the famous declaration was drawn up, and re- 
marked that a celebration was held in Charlotte every few days 
in honor of the event, and that every man who came to Char- 
lotte to live was obliged to swear to support the "Mecklenburg 
Declaration." He told me, moreover, that the frame house just 
up the street was once occupied by Cornwallis as headquarters — 
I think just before he marched away to fight at Guilford Court 
House. This was a pleasant introduction to Charlotte. 

Disappointed in not reaching the Georgia gold field, I was re- 
warded in seeing a portion of the same belt at Charlotte, for this 
town is the center of the North Carolina portion of the great 
Southern gold-mining region. Here, many years ago, a United 
States mint was established, and still exists in the shape of an 
assay ofiice, and in the adjoining county, Cabarrus, was found 
the largest nugget ever dug in the United States. The pioneer 
gold mine of the Atlantic slope was opened in North Carolina. 

In company with two New York gentlemen, one of whom was 
(142) 



IN NORTH CAROLINA. 143 

fortuuately a manufacturer of mining tools, and so knew all 
about mines, I visited the Rudisill mine, just out of the city lira 
its of Charlotte. It has been worked at "odd spells" for fifty 
years. They say a million and a half in gold has been taken 
from it. During the war the Confederate Government worked 
the mine, but it was for sulphur, not gold. Powder was wanted 
and must be made, gold or no gold. 

The mine was out in the middle of a nearly flat red-clay "old 
field." The buildings comprised a few sheds to cover the ma- 
chinery, a pump to clear the mine of the clay-colored water, and 
the hoisting windlass and the stamps. Piles of ore lay about, 
looking just like the cart-loads of specimens brought to Kansas 
from Colorado. The machinery looked rude enough, and what 
I would call the walking-beam of the pumping engine was loaded 
with a miscellaneous collection of old iron. The shaft, I was 
told, was three hundred feet deep. Near by, some men were 
sinking another shaft, walling it up as they went down, with pine 
logs. This shaft was to be of less depth than the other, which 
was to drain it. Mining in North Carolina appears to be a very 
matter-of-fact affair, carried on when tbere is nothing else to do> 
the work being done like cellar or well-digging — by laborers 
who work for day wages. Just now there is a revival of the 
mining industry, as there is of every other industry in the South. 
We learned that reduction works, with a capital of $600,000, 
were to be started at Charlotte, for smelting ores of all sorts, from 
iron to gold. 

After passing by the military school, where a lot of hearty 
boys in the inevitable gray uniform were playing ball, we drove 
to the old mint It is a snowy-white building, one story, with a 
high basement, surrounded by trees of course, one of which was 
a flowering variety of the buckeye, and very handsome. Over 
the door was our old friend the American Eagle, spread out like 
a quail on toast, and from the flagstaff floated the flag in which 
Kirby was wont to wrap himself when he died. 

The director of the mint showed us through a few of the rooms. 
Being a Government institution, most of them were closed early 
in the afternoon. The Government never works late. The rooms 



144 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

were littered with all sorts of rocks and fragmentary boulders, 
but one thing in the rock line was new to rae. It was a long, 
narrow bar of flexible sandstone. Taken up by the middle, the 
stone bent as much as would a piece of leather of similar length 
and thickness. The black people call this sandstone "limber 
grit." It would make a good backbone for a politician — looking 
like the real article, but yielding on occasion. A quarry of this 
curious stone exists near Charlotte. We also saw the "leopard 
stone," a white rock, with small black spots penetrating its sub- 
stance. 

The assayer explained the operations of his department, and 
gave the benefit of twelve years' observation of North Carolina 
gold-mining. He spoke of the activity now prevailing, but I 
judged that as a whole the business did not, or at least had not, 
paid. Still it seemed like richness. Just as we were entering 
the mint a gentleman came out with a little bar of gold in his 
hand, in shape like a small plug of tobacco. It was marked $182. 
He said the gold came from a placer mine of his, some fifty miles 
away. At the hotel I saw several of these bars, one of them 
valued at $1,000. The gold was from mines in the vicinity. 

On the register of visitors at the mint was the recently inscribed 
name of President Chadbourne, of Williams College. He had 
passed through Charlotte a few days before, and gone to the North 
Carolina mountains. The truth is, every nook and corner of the 
South is being explored by Northern men. Every mineral de- 
posit is bejng examined; every forest and every stream afibrding 
water power. All the mountain fastnesses, from Asheville to 
Rabun Gap, are traversed by tourists who hire teams in the 
mountain towns and travel for days together. Northern capital 
is making its mark from Birmingham, Alabama, all the way along 
the great mountain chain. The eager Northern spirit is abroad 
in the hills; a wonder-working genius, waking the stillness which 
has prevailed since time was. The wealth which the South for 
years has refused is now ready to be poured at her feet. 

Charlotte has another "boom" besides gold; it is temperance. 
I never expected this in the State of North Carolina, even though 
the Governor of South Carolina found it a "long time between 



IN NORTH CAROLINA. 145 

drinks." The Observer, the old paper of Charlotte, was full of 
it. The city had just passed an anti-license ordinance, and the 
Observer said that although many colored votes went against pro- 
hibition, enough voted for it to secure its adoption in Charlotte. 
The movement seems spreading in the North Carolina towns. 
Perhaps the example of Kansas has something to do with it. 
At Macon, on the 2d of May, a gentleman said : " Well, your fel- 
lows stopped drinking yesterday." I had forgotten what this Geor- 
gian remembered. Everything that Kansas does is important to 
the rest of creation. 

We left Charlotte early in the morning by the "Fast Mail," 
which did not prove so very fast after all, and crossed the bal- 
ance of the State of North Carolina, and before noon had ar- 
rived at Danville, Virginia. The country possessed the same 
uniformity of low wooded hills and fields that I had observed for 
so many miles. The pines were perhaps not so frequent as in the 
country below, and the oaks were more abundant, but the want- 
ing charm of the Southern landscape in Georgia and the Caro- 
linas is grass. Trees and flowers do not compensate for its 
absence. One sees the most beautiful roses growing apparently 
in almost pure sand — not a blade of grass beneath or around 
them. The forest isles are covered with the dead pine-straw. 
The country makes o;ie think of an uncarpeted room. 

The most important town passed through in North Carolina 
was Salisbury. Here was a Confederate prison-pen during the 
war; and much suffering and the work of death among the pris- 
oners, observed by a surgeon of literary tendencies, led to the 
writing of a magazine article, one of the saddest I ever read, 
called " The King of Terrors Uncrowned," designed to show, it 
seemed, that to these poor captive soldiers death came a welcome 
visitor. Since I read it, however, nothing could "uncrown" the 
terrors of Salisbury for me. A cloud passed over the sun as we 
came to the place, and the old wooden buildings about the depot 
looked forlorn in the shadow. It seemed hard that a town named 
after a sweet old cathedral city in England, its name reviving 
the story read when we were younger, and perhaps nearer heaven 
than now, the "Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," should be linked 
with such an evil memory. 



146 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

At some little town on the road — Thomasville, I think — a child 
came to the door with an American flag, the only time I had seen 
that symbol thus displayed in all the long round through the 
South. 

The train was confined to one passenger car, and the stops at 
the pine-woods piles were very frequent. We entered Virginia 
and a tobacco country, and the enemies of the weed may add to 
their arguments that it makes the country devoted to its cultiva- 
tion the abomination of desolation. The soil of the fields was so 
white in the sunshine as to almost pain the eyes, and ugly, mud- 
daubed and windowless tobacco barns disfigured the fields. We 
were traveling a country settled two hundred years ago, yet still 
largely in forest. Towns were scanty. Two I remember as hav- 
ing figured in the war story — Burkeville and Amelia Court House. 
The sun crept down the sky, and when its slanting rays announced 
four o'clock we came to a remembered place. Belle Isle. 

At Belle Isle station passengers change cars for Washington. 
The island itself is separated from the station by one branch of 
the James, which roars in and around and through countless 
boulders. The low flat point of the island was where the prison- 
ers were camped. On the low hill was a battery overlooking 
them. The battery and the prisoners are gone ; and a portion of 
the point is occupied by the black roofs and smoking chimneys of 
the "Old Dominion Iron Works." Bridges now connect the 
island with both banks of the James. In a few moments we were 
in Richmond. 



Jo 



SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 



Washington, D. C, May 10, 1881. 

As the site of the old Tolbooth in Edinburgh was the heart of 
Mid Lothian, so the Capitol square in Richmond is the heart of 
Virginia, and hither, a few moments after the train crossed the 
bridge, or rather succession of bridges, from island to island, that 
cross the James, my steps led me. Here on the crest of the 
shaded hill stands the plain, old-fashioned capitol, with its col- 
umns and its wide porch, where for over a hundred years the 
Governors of Virginia have been inaugurated; near at hand is 
the "hip-roofed," brick gubernatorial mansion, the statue of 
Stonewall Jackson, the immense bronze monumental pile sur- 
mounted by Crawford's great equestrian statue of Washington, 
and a little farther down the slope, under a sort of pagoda, is the 
graceful form and expressive features of Henry Clay, in marble. 

This old State House was used as the Confederate capitol, and 
in and around this square every human passion has found a stage 
for its exhibition. The frenzy of the outbreaking revolt ; the mad 
exultation over victory; the crushing gloom of disaster; the con- 
fused flight of panic — all these has this little spot of earth wit- 
nessed. For four long years not a single moment of absolute 
peace and quietude had visited it; but on this Saturday afternoon 
what a picture of peace it presented ! The sunlight sifting through 
the elms fell in bright patches on the wide walks; hundreds of 
children slept or smiled in their little carriages, or clung to their 
black nurses' fingers as they took their first lessons in the art of 
walking; the tame squirrels scurried over the grass, and the air 
was full of the petulant clamor of the sparrows. High above all 
sits on his great bronze horse the soldier farmer of Mount Ver- 
non, intently gazing on some crisis in the hard-fought field where 
the ragged Continentals grapple with the foe and will not yield; 
while the horse, his ears laid forward, his nostrils spread, one im- 
(147) 



148 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

patient fore-foot pawing the air, seems but to need the slightest 
lowering of the strong hand on the rein to send him flying like a 
thunderbolt into the thickest of the fray. Around the monument 
stand the colossal figures of Marshall, Mason, Henry, Lewis, and 
the other great statesmen, law-givers and founders of Virginia; 
and as I read their names I remembered that not one of them 
failed, before he descended to his grave, to enter, with all the 
solemnity of a prophet of old, his protest against the continuance 
of slavery in Virginia. Alas, alas, that their voices were not 
heard and heard in time ! 

The other statues of the square seemed dwarfed by the pres- 
ence of this great work, worthy, I think, of any capital in the 
world. The Jackson statue, contributed by Englishmen, is a fine, 
soldierly figure, somewhat idealizing, I should think, the Presby- 
terian general, but still fine. The Clay statue is by Hart, the 
Kentucky sculptor, and is a pleasing work. 

The fine, well-built streets of Richmond would be attractive if 
there were no special historical associations connected with them. 
The city lies on a succession of hills along the James, and from 
its start has shown a disposition to move west. The town was 
originally started five miles further down the James, but, as the 
stories go, the " town company " placed such an extravagant figure 
on the lots that the people moved on up the river. In the time 
of the Revolution, Church Hill, a sharp bluflf" overlooking the 
James, was the center of the town, but now the fashionable " West 
End " is over a mile away. The city has gained 27 per cent, in 
population since 1870, and now contains 62,000 people. 

Sunday was passed in looking at what may be seen on a rest- 
day, and at night I went to church and heard, from a clergyman 
of the Methodist Church South, a very good Republican dis- 
course. One passage was particularly fine; it was where he 
showed that the division of land among all the people, and the 
exercise by every man of the elective franchise, was the glory 
and safety of the Republic. Yet I did not learn that the preacher 
was even a Readjuster. 

On Monday I walked along Casey street in a rather more agree- 
able state of mind than several thousand of my countrymen have 



SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 149 

traversed that thoroughfare, and stopped to look into the largest 
old junk warehouses I ever saw. There was old iron enough 
piled up in there to sink a man-of-war. The proprietor, a rosy, 
pleasant gentleman, formerly one of Stonewall Jackson's artillery- 
men, went about with me and exhibited his treasures. There were 
cannon balls of all calibers, cannon of all patterns, and partially 
concealed by a pile of boards was a huge, rusty mass of iron; it 
was part of the shaft of the Merrimac, the famous ram that sank 
our poor old Cumberland, but brought out the Monitor to fight 
and almost revolutionized naval warfare. The battle-fields, the 
ex-gunner told me, were pretty well cleaned up now, though for 
a long time they furnished enormous quantities of lead and iron. 

Next we came to Libby prison. Its exterior is little changed, 
I should judge, and the iron gratings still cover the windows. 
It bears but one sign on its front, in worn letters the words, 
"Southern Fertilizer Company." The whole building is now 
used as a manufactory of cotton and tobacco fertilizers, and a 
sharp, pungent odor pervades the rooms. The fertilizer is pre- 
pared with South Carolina phosphate as a base, treated with sul- 
phuric acid, and there is nothing oflensive about the ])remises 
save the sharp smell. Many ladies visit the place. The super- 
intendent, Mr. Gilham, in the intervals of business went about 
with me and chatted about the old institution. He seems to take 
a great deal of pride in it, and takes pleasure in showing visitors 
around. The number of sight-seers is quite wonderful. The 
first page of the register I looked at showed one hundred and 
eighty visitors in one day. Nearly all were from the New Eng- 
land States. An occasional Western man strolls around, and I 
noticed among the last recorded the name of " Theodore Terry, 
Topeka, Kansas." 

Mr. Gilham told toe that Libby, whose name was attached to 
the prison, never owned a brick in the building, and occupied 
only a portion of it. He said Mr. Libby suflfered a good deal of 
opprobrium on account of the misfortune to his name. The Fer- 
tilizer Company occupied a portion of the building in 1872, and 
in 1880 took possession of the last of it. The building has been 
lithographed as an advertising card, and hundreds will see it with- 
10 



150 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

out suspectiag that they are lookiog at the once-famous prison. 
The arrangement of the rooms is about the same as of old, though 
doors have been cut through in places. The ceiling of Major 
Turner's office is still visible, though the partition cutting off* his 
apartments from that into which the commissioned officers were 
ushered is gone. Mr. Gilhara still retains the folding-doors. 
Having heard a good word for Wirz down in Georgia, I was 
not surprised to hear Major Turner commended. Mr. Gilham 
said that ex-prisoners almost universally spoke kindly of him, 
regarding him as grown men regard the schoolmaster of their 
boyhood. This may be so; yet I have not felt any poignant re- 
gret that I failed to make the Major's acquaintance during the 
war. 

Mr. Gilham pointed out to me some of the names carved in the 
floor. I noted "Sergt. A. E Berry, Co. K, 7th Regt O. V., 
August 18, 1863." Thousands of names have been covered with 
whitewash. Mr. Gilham said that he was requested by letter to 
cut out of the floor and send to the writer his name, which he 
would find in a designated place. He did so, and I saw where a 
new piece of plank had supplied the vacancy. Checkerboards 
marked on the floor are still visible on inspection. 

Mr. Gilhara is certainly of an obliging disposition, or he would 
be greatly worried by some of his callers. He took down the old 
flagstaff" which had borne in turn the flags of the Union and the 
Confederacy, and sawed it up for the benefit of lady relic-hunters, 
and exhibited a pardonable sense of injury because some doubted 
the genuineness of the relic, although it cost them nothing. 

The yard under which prisoners were wont to construct tunnels 
has been cut down, and is partly covered by sheds. Mr. Gilham 
said he had had among his visitors the officer who first went into 
the tunnel business, but he did not remember his name. 

The last room visited was the famous garret, so graphically de- 
scribed by Chaplain McCabe in his lecture on Life in Libby 
Prison. Its grim and cobwebbed rafters have not changed, yet 
I should think it by far the most comfortable room in the house. 

For some time I sat in Mr. Gilham's office, looking out on 
Casey street. There was a telephone there. What would not 



SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 151 

the prisoners have given for a telephone which would have 
brought to thera the sounds of home! Opposite was a machine 
shop and a yard full of young trees, and beyond that the Bethel 
public school, (formerly a sailors' chapel,) and the scholars look- 
ing out of the upper windows at the old prison, and the sailing 
craft moored to the wharf, and the gliding James, and the low 
green lands beyond it. The building a little further down the 
street, once used as the prison hospital, now presents a squalid 
appearance. The windows have been bricked up, and the place 
is a stable and wagon yard. Castle Thunder I did not see. It 
exists uo more. It was burned up utterly a year ago last No- 
vember. Of Belle Isle I have spoken. Libby alone remains, 
but its memories will remain for many years yet — until the last 
man who ever dwelt within its walls a prisoner has ceased to live. 
Then it will become a fading tradition, losing itself in the gath- 
ering mists of time, until what was cruel shall cease to vex the 
hearts of men. For such is the decree of pitying heaven. 

From Libby I went down the long street for some distance, and 
then climbed a long flight of wooden steps and passed the man- 
sion occupied by the Van Lews, including Miss Van Lew, for- 
merly postmistress at Richmond, and so came to St. John's 
church. In this church Patrick Henry made his most famous 
speech. The church, a wooden structure, has been greatly 
changed, but pew No. 68 is still pointed out as the spot where the 
great Virginian spoke his choice: "As for me, give me liberty or 
give me death." The janitor showed the old font which came 
from a yet older church on the lower James, and the old sound- 
ing-board now in a brick lecture room in the churchyard; but I 
kept thinking about Henry and his speech, and wondering if in 
those days before short-hand was invented, they really did get 
his exact words. I think the speech was unpremeditated. Some- 
body had proposed another compromise; a little more "May it 
please your Majesty" business, and so Patrick Henry just got 
up and "turned loose" on him. That is what I think. 

Falling in with a young fellow, a native of Richmond and 
somewhat familiar with localities, a view was taken of the city 
from Libby Hill. A Virginia gentleman, who had seen better 



162 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

days, joined us in reduced circumstances and a suit of blue 
clothes. We learned from him that the war was a piece of fool- 
ishness from the beginning, and involved great loss of life and 
property, and that had it not been for the war Richmond would 
now be a city of 100,000 people. As it was, Virginians were 
leaving Virginia, and a funereal state of affairs prevailed gener- 
ally. This was too much, and we moved off in the direction of 
Powhatan, (you will accent the last syllable,) the ancient seat of 
the Mayos, still a leading family of Richmond, a mile or two down 
the river. We came first upon the old neglected family cemetery 
of the Mayos — a picture of desolation. One broken-down tomb 
marked the final resting-place of the two young children of Win- 
field and Maria Mayo Scott. Leaving this, we went to a sub- 
stantial brick house near by, and found on the lawn, under a 
ruined summer house, a rock. Beneath" it, we "are told, lies the 
gallant Captain John Smith, the founder of Virginia. A little 
black girl led us into a kitchen garden, and there we found 
another boulder, on which lay Capt. Smith's head, which Powha- 
tan (with the accent on the last syllable) proposed to mash, un- 
til Pocahontas rushed in, according to history and the pictures, 
and saved J. S. The rock looked as if it might be the rock. It 
offered as many conveniences for the braining business as any 
rock, and we went away satisfied with the tradition. 

A long, hot walk back to the city took the life out of future 
investigations, except a visit to the capitol. It being after three 
o'clock, the State Library, which contains a fine collection of 
historical portraits, was found closed. I met Mr. Ruffner, the 
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, who informed me 
that Virginia raised and expended from all sources about one 
million dollars a year on her common schools, and that the num- 
ber of scholars, white and black, was yearly increasing. 

The colored janitor led the way to the roof, where a fine view 
was obtained of Richmond and the country about it. The view 
is simply pretty, and not imposing. The guide pointed out the 
directions of Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, Seven Pines, and the 
other battle-fields of the seven days' fighting. In the far dis- 
tance a yellow spot indicated the site of a still-remaining work 



SOME HOURS IN RICHMOND. 153 

of the three lines of defense which encircled the city. The works 
nearest the town have generally disappeared. Monroe Park, the 
pretty new park of Richmond, was the old fair ground, used by 
the Confederates as a camp of instruction. One of the points of 
interest pointed out was the only colored insane asylum in the 
world. 

In these. stirring times in Virginia politics it would not do to- 
leave Richmond without visiting some party headquarters. There 
not being time to hear both sides, I "took in" the Mahone organ, 
the Whig. The Funders have for their mouthpiece the Dispatch, 
and an evening paper, the State, the editor of which always signs 
his name in full, thus : John Hampden Charaberlayne. The Whig 
people, though playing a lone hand, seemed in excellent spirits. 
One of the attaches was an old Richmond newspaper man, and 
gave some stirring sketches of newspaper life in the good old 
times. I remarked that running a paper in Richmond in the war- 
time must have been attended with difficulties, meaning meager 
dispatches, and things of that sort. " Difficulties ! I should say 
so," said he; "we had both the Pollards here, and times were 
lively. Scarcely a day passed that some one did not come into 
the office with a gun." He described in a cheerful way the 
taking-off of Mr. Rives Pollard, once an ornament to Richmond 
journalism. It appears that in his latter years Mr. Pollard took 
up the sometimes lucrative but occasionally dangerous practice 
of blackmailing. He was warned that his useful and agreeable 
existence might be suddenly terminated, but felt confident in his 
ability to "draw" quicker than anybody else. One day he wrote 
an article attacking the sister of a man named Grant. He sent 
a proof of the article to the brother. He was asked what it 
would cost to suppress the article. He replied fifteen hundred 
dollars. Mr. Grant said he could not pay it, and decided that a 
shot-gun would be cheaper. The article appeared, and Grant 
retired to the third story of a building, where behind a window 
curtain, he waited for Pollard's approach. At last he appeared, 
driving a light wagon. From the window up aloft came the 
crash of both barrels of the shot-gun. The victim sprang up 
with a last convulsive eflTort, drew his pistol, turned his ghastly 



154 SOUTHERN LETTEES. 

head about to see from whence came the blow, and dropped dead. 
The editors of Richmond have always done their share of fight- 
ing. Mr. Elam, the present editor of the Whig, a very mild- 
mannered gentleman, by the way, figured in one of the latest 
duels, and was severely hurt. Editorial life in Richmond is not 
the cold, dead, barren waste it is with us. 

I endeavored to get at least a clear idea of the Readjuster 
position. It requires a great many figures to state it accurately. 
Throwing out the mathematics, it is substantially this: 

The Readjusters claim that the lawful debt of the State of Vir- 
ginia, at the outbreak of the war, was about $30,000,000. Taking 
out the one-third they claim that West Virginia should pay, left it 
$20,000,000. They claim that, throwing out compound interest, 
interest that has been paid on what was really West Virginia's 
part of the debt, and making allowance for what has been regu- 
larly paid by Virginia, the debt remains at about $20,000,000. 
This the Readjusters say they will pay. There is no talk of ab- 
solutely refusing to pay, or repudiating. The Readjusters say 
that they will pay this $20,000,000 with three per cent, interest, 
and that is all the State can pay without an increase of taxation, 
which neither party dares advocate. 

The Funder estimate makes the debt larger, and the Funder 
party proposes to pay it off in talk about " the honah of Vir- 
ginia." 

The Readjusters claim that the Funders were in power for nine 
years, and instead of paying it off, increased it. They claim for 
themselves that they have been in power a year, and that in that 
time the penitentiary has become self-supporting, the schools have 
prospered, and the State government has been honestly conducted. 

The Readjusters have called their State Convention for June, 
and were holding primary meetings in and around Richmond at 
the time of my visit. Their convention will consist of over 
seven hundred members, and it is intended that Democratic Re- 
adjusters, Republican Readjusters, and Readjusters of both colors, 
shall have a representation. The black Readjusters are allowed 
delegates in proportion to their vote. 

The Funder party seems to contain all the swallow-tail, kid- 



SOME HOUES IN RICHMOND. 155 

glove politicians; all the doctors of diviuity, all the irreconcilables 
and iuiplacables, and all who believe in Jeff. Davis. The Funders 
rely on their tone, and will be supported by all the fine-haired 
Republican papers of the North. 

The advances to the blacks appear to be made by the Readjust- 
ers alone, and in view of this I should not be surprised if the 
Funders drop the debt question, raise the cry of the white against 
the "nigger," and go in for a fight on the color-line, as of old. 

I do not know that the Readjusters will do any good, but I 
know the Funders will not. Northern men can take up their 
position accordingly. 

This morning I left both the Funders and the Readjusters. 
Taking the Richmond, Fredericksburg^& Potomac road, I sped 
away northward. We passed through but one town of note, 
Fredericksburg. A former member of the Fifty-fifth Virginia 
stepped out on the platform and showed me the position. Here 
on a ridge on the north side of the Rappahanock the Federal ar- 
tillery kept up a tremendous fire while the pontoons were laid, and 
our troops fought their way through the town. Yonder was 
Marye's hill; there was still Marye's house; at the base of the 
hill was the fated stone wall. Here was the slaughter; you could 
walk over a large space stepping on the bodies. At one point, 
following a ravine, the Union troops broke the Confederate line, 
but were driven back and the assault failed. I looked back at 
the town, at the hills, at the river. It was perhaps the last time 
I should look upon a field where my countrymen, Southern as well 
as Northern, fought and fell, and were laid in bloody graves. As 
for the rest, it was peace. We came to the Potomac; sailing up 
its broad expanse we passed Mount Vernon, its low roof, its pil- 
lared porch, its tufted woods and green slopes, fit for the resting- 
place of a good man, whom his countrymen of every section and 
faith delight to remember and honor. Later, we came in sight of 
that marvel, the dome of the capitol. Enduring as a mountain 
yet seeming as light as a great white bubble, it rose against the 
sky. It seemed to me in its strength and brightness and white- 
ness, an emblem of a Nation, free and pure and strong, made, not 



156 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

for separation or division, or downfall or decay, but for a refuge 
and a hope for all men till the end of days. 

With my arrival at Washington my tour through the South 
ended, and nothing remains now but in another letter to sum up 
the lesson it has taught. 



A 



0, 22rr CONCLUSIONS. 

Washington, D. C, May 11, 1881. 

From the beginning of this correspondence it has been my in- 
tention to reserve a full expression of opinion in regard to the 
condition of the South until I had taken all the accessible testi- 
mony by eye and ear. In spite, however, of this resolution, it is 
quite probable that I have before given opinions in a piece-meal 
fashion ; but I revoke now all previous acts, and declare this my 
/as^ judgment on the case. Of course this is to be understood as 
purely an individual expression. It is not given as The Cham- 
pion's opinion, or as an authoritative expression of Republican 
sentiment. It is at least possible that another Kansas Republi- 
can, with precisely the same opportunities for observation that I 
enjoyed, might come to entirely different conclusions. I say this 
because I do not wish hereafter anything that I have said in these , 
letters brought up as a party argument. The story is submitted 
as my own, to have such weight as it may with the several hun- 
dreds or thousands of Kansans I have the honor to number among 
my friends and acquaintances. 

As to the opportunities: I have traversed the States of Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and 
Virginia. I visited four capitals — Nashville, Atlanta, Colum- 
bia, and Richmond, judging that these cities might be counted as 
centers of opinion, and fair sources of information. I also visited 
such cities as Knoxville, Chattanooga, Macon, Savannah, and 
Charlotte, as centers of business. 

As to the people I met, I bore no letters to eminent persons, 
and in fact, lost out of my pocket at Lexington, Kentucky, nearly 
every letter of every sort I started with, and thereafter made my 
acquaintances by "word of mouth." In consequence, I did not 
meet the self-styled "leaders of opinion." I met the common 
sort of people, and I am inclined to think that they lead in the 
(157) 



158 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

long run. A successful political leader in this country is the 
man who watches the drift and falls in with it. The breaker 
does not lead the ocean. It comes to shore because it is obliged 
to by the pressure behind it. In the South I tried to consult the 
ocean, not the surf 

I do not think I was met by any want of confidence. I made 
no secret, it is true, of my own opinions, or my errand. I did 
not think my style of beauty adapted to the detective business, 
but I am greatly mistaken if any Southern man kept back or 
evaded anything on that account. Everybody seemed at least 
frank, and I may add, friendly. I do not remember that I heard 
in the South a word uttered designedly offensive to me as a 
Northern man and a Republican. 

Pursuing the course I have indicated, I met editors, farmers, 
merchants, clergymen, Federal office-holders, native Democrats, 
native Republicans, Union soldiers, Confederate soldiers, and men 
of both colors. If there had been any other kinds or varieties of 
men down there, I should have endeavored to interview them. 

For myself, I met no ostracism, no coldness, no insolence, no 
hostility; yet I do not in the least doubt that all these have ex- 
isted in the past. I particularly questioned men as to the faith- 
fulness to a once-existing state of facts of Judge Tourgee's 
"Fool's Errand." Two gentlemen, one a Republican, the other 
a Democrat, both native Southerners, told me they did not believe 
that the book, though a romance, was an exaggeration. Their 
names, if given, would carry weight wherever they are known. 
The Northern man who fancies that because the sea is reasonably 
calm now, there has never been a storm, is very greatly mistaken. 

One of ray purposes was to ascertain if there was any prospect 
of a "New South" in a political sense. I did not find evidence 
to justify me in believing in the growth to dominance in any 
Southern State, of the Republican party as it exists in the North ; 
but I do think there is a general division into two camps among 
the Democrats. I do not know that when a general election 
comes there will be an absolute separation at the polls. There 
are, however, two sorts of Democrats. There are Democrats in 
Tennessee who voted for the Republican, Hawkins, in preference 



CONCLUSIONS. 159 

to either of the Democratic candidates. There are Democrats in 
Georgia who vote for Joe Brown because they think him liberal, 
and there are Republicans who vote for him for the same reason. 
There are Democrats who vote against him because he is not an 
implacable, pig-headed Bourbon. In South Carolina there is such 
a thing as a liberal Democrat, who in time will make his voice 
heard against the eternal rule of the " first families " in that State. 
The Mahone party in Virginia, I am free to say, would be a good- 
enough Republican party for me if I lived in Virginia. I do not 
know much about the Virginia State debt, but I know that the 
Readjusters are for a vote for every voter, and a spelling-book 
for every child; and that is all the Republicanism that is abso- 
lutely needed in the South just now. In Kentucky, the regular 
Republicans say that the party is slowly gaining ground In 
North Carolina, salvation must come through the Republican 
organization, when it comes. 

Straws show which way the wind blows, and I should say that 
in the South the sign of hide-bound Bourbonism was a still cling- 
ing belief in that hoary humbug, Jefferson Davis. A man who 
believes in Jeff. Davis is incapable of learning anything. The 
style of head that holds Jeff. Davis has no more rooms to let. 
Judging from indications, the Jeff. Davis party is in the minority. 
I suppose in stores, offices, and other places, I saw the portraits 
of Lee and Jackson a hundred times. I did not see Jeff. Davis 
once. I suppose his portrait is hung up in the family shrines of 
the bitter-hearted class of old women to which Davis himself be- 
longs. My business in the South was entirely with adult males. 
If you desire to consult a thermometer of public sentiment in the 
South, just note whether Jeff. Davis is rising or falling. 

I found a great deal of pride and reverence felt for Lee, Jack- 
son, Joseph E. Johnston, and other Confederate generals. The 
struggles of the Confederate army were spoken of with much 
exaltation of feeling. This from men who fought and suffered in 
the Confederate armies is very natural. So far from censuring 
it, I think Northern people ought to accept it as proper enough. 
It really has nothing to do with the final settlement of questions. 
If a political revolution ever occurs in the South, it will be led 



160 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

by ex-Confederate soldiers. I regard the ex-military element 
quite as hopeful as any to be found in the South, 

As far as the colored people are concerned, I should say that, 
save in South Carolina, where their vote is not counted, they 
have votes, but no direct political influence. They do not appear 
to have the faculty of self-organization. If the Bourbons had 
sense enough to put some colored men on their ticket, they could 
seriously break into the Republican ranks in local and State 
elections. The colored folks appear to be as sheep without a 
shepherd. 

To sum up, the States I have visited are quiet in a political 
sense. I should judge that, save in South Carolina, the colored 
man has a fair show to vote, if nothing more. I think there is 
a growing idea of political toleration; for the evidence of it, I 
refer to past letters. I saw little of the rural country, and it is 
quite possible that political bigotry still exists there. I did not 
happen to see it. 

If it is asked to what cause I mainly attribute this improve- 
ment, I should say, the utter defeat of Tilden in 1876 and Han- 
cock in 1880. The Southern people are easily elated, and arrogant 
in the hour of victory. The first battle of Bull Run was an 
awful disaster to the South for this reason. A Bull Run in 1876 
or 1880 would have produced similar results. The South, to 
change the Scripture, would have thought that new things had 
passed away and all things had become old, and would have 
attempted to turn back the clock, with the result of bitterly ex- 
asperating the North, and infinitely injuring the people of the 
South, white and black. I believe firmly in the final salvation 
of the Southern soul, but I would not yet allow the Devil any 
liberties with the convert. 

Next to the belief among the Southern people that the spine of 
the great National Democratic party of the country has been 
hopelessly injured, I should place as an effectual means of grace 
the daily-increasing intercourse with Northern people in the way 
of business. We of Kansas do not go South ; we have a good- 
enough country of our own to attend to; but the number of 
Eastern people who go South is astonishing. In the winter. 



CONCLUSIONS. 161 

Florida is full of them, and they travel very leisurely on their 
homeward journey, stopping here and there. The mountains of 
North Carolina are full of tourists. Millions of Northern capi- 
tal are now invested in the South, and the people have no partic- 
ular occasion to quarrel with men who are bringing money into 
their country. Such men are usually Republicans, and will say 
their say. Northern newspapers are not as generally sold in the 
farther South as I could wish, but they are working in. The 
Southern, press, too, is growing, and it is noticeable that the 
papers which are most read are such as the Louisville Courier- 
Journal and the Atlanta Constitution — papers raised up by Prov- 
idence to tell the Southern donkey politician that he is not a lion, 
by any manner of means. 

I heard very little vaporing in the South. Nobody talked 
about the "Southern gentleman, sah," which made me believe 
the more strongly in his existence. I judge John Edwards's 
"knights" and "paladins" are not scattered through the brush 
as plentifully as in the old time. There has been a great change 
in the Southern vocabulary. 

The vital question will of course be asked : Is there among the 
mass of the white people of the South any real love for the Union? 
In reply I should answer, very little, as we of the North under- 
stand it. I judge as much as anything by the absence of the 
National flag. I do not remember seeing it, except in one in- 
stance, waving anywhere — except on vessels and United States 
buildings. I have mentioned its absence at .the Augusta Schiitz- 
enfest and in the parade of the military company at Columbia. 
If they loved it they would hang it upon the outer walls. The 
signs of attachment to the late Confederacy are disheartening 
only as they supplant attachment to the Government and the 
cause which is not lost. I did not hear a Southern Democrat say 
that he felt himself an American rather than a Georgian or a 
South Carolinian. The universal custom of wearing a gray uni- 
form whenever any uniform is worn, is another mark of a narrow 
idea of what one's country is. The South is yet a long way oft'. 
I do not expect the South to worship John Brown, or even Charles 
Sumner. I mean that the Southerner has not vet learned to take 



162 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

pride and hope in this Nation, in which his interest is as great as 
that of a Northern man. 

I found a general kindly feeling prevailing in regard to Presi- 
dent Garfield. I have no reason to hope that the President will 
pay any attention to my advice, but I believe in the advice all 
the same. He has it in his power to help the South, to keep 
it on the up grade, and I hope he will do it. I believe the fact 
is generally accepted in the South that he is a Republican Presi- 
dent, and he is not expected to act as anything else. He is not 
expected to appoint Democrats to office, but there is a choice of 
Republicans. If I were President, I would, in the distribution 
of patronage in the South, appoint or reappoint native Republi- 
cans, especially men who served in the Confederate army, and 
when the war was over owned up like little men. I should stand 
by Longstreet, and Gen. McLaws of Savannah. I think it un- 
grateful to discard men who breasted the storm of popular hatred 
in defense of the good cause. I am free to say that I would not 
have endured what they did for all the offices in America. The 
supply of native Republicans exhausted, I should take Northern 
Republicans who have been in the South for some years, engaged 
not in politics but business. I should appoint colored men to 
such positions as they could fill with credit to themselves, the 
good of the public service, and without giving offense to all the 
white people without regard to party. I do not know of any 
principle that requires the appointment of any man, white or 
black, to a position for which he is not competent, and who irri- 
tates the public with whom he has to transact business. 

So much for the political situation in the South. It is improv- 
ing, but yet needs improvement. 

Of the improvement of the South financially, and in every 
business sense, I have spoken in every letter I have written. It 
is really a noble country, and its resources are so varied. I know 
that it can be developed. 

All the old fallacies of slavery are exploded. The idea that 
the black man will not work except as a slave, has gone to the 
dogs. He do'fes work. The old theory that cotton cannot be 
raised by free labor, is disputed by the bales of cotton themselves. 



CONCLUSIONS. 163 

That the negro must have an overseer, is confessed nonsense. He 
does best as a renter, when he is thrown on his own responsibility, 
and makes or loses, according to his industry or lack of it. That 
the white man cannot work in the Southern climate, is idiocy. 
He does work. A man who can stand the fires of an iron-mill 
in Alabama is not likely to perish in the sun. The Confederate 
soldier was a most enduring specimen of manhood, and stood the 
climate; and where a man can carry a knapsack in summer he 
can plow. The Scotch Highlander is the best soldier of any race 
or color that ever fought under a tropical sun. There is nothing 
the matter with his endurance. The white mau of the South can 
work if he will. I hope he will. 

Republicans have always relied on popular education as au 
ally, and the free school is certainly becoming a popular institu- 
tion in the South. The attendance of both whites and blacks is 
yearly increasing. Let us all take courage. 

I think the black man has a future in the South. He will al- 
ways live there, and I think will prosper. He will do the work, 
and as the country improves he will have more work to do. In 
the cities his children are supplied with the best educational ap- 
pliances. We have no such colored schools in Kansas. He has 
good churches, too, and a trifle too many of them and too expen- 
sive ; and I think here and there a preacher could be profitably dis- 
pensed with. The Southern white churches made a great mistake 
iu allowing the colored people to leave them. They say they 
would go, but probably religious Bourbonism had something to 
do with it. 

The, theory has been advanced, and I am inclined to believe it, 
that the colored race in the South has divided into two 



one moving upward and the other down. The former class are 
acquiring property and consideration; the latter are in danger of 
being swept from the earth by'their own vices. The low-down 
black man is very low, that is certain; but decidedly the worst 
place of resort for drunken colored people of both sexes I saw in 
the South was kept by white men. 

The South mus} go on, and she will, as surely as there is a 
Power in the world thac works for fiua^Taud eternal good. I do 



164 SOUTHERN LETTERS. 

uot believe that there are Bourbons euough iu the world to stop 
the course of industry and prosperity. "Sovereign, just and 
mighty death," as Raleigh calls it, is doing some good, and the 
race of statesmen who made the South what she was before the 
war, and then dragged her into the war, like a ruflBan who, uot 
satisfied with bludgeoning his victim, would fain cut her throat 
afterward, are dying off. God certainly will not send another 
generation of such. All the North has to do is to stand by the 
party which never had anything to do with slavery or rebellion, 
and await the issue with patience, while the South recovers from 
the effects of both slavery and rebellion. 

Were I obliged to sleep, like Rip Van Winkle, I would choose 
for the place of my long repose some high mountain in the South, 
so that when I awoke I might see a " New South " indeed ; so that 
I might see fields where now is wilderness, and palaces where 
now are huts; so that I might see the white school-house by the 
wayside, and the church upon the hill, and the mill beside the 
stream; so that I might see above all, and everywhere, a banner 
now tolerated, but not loved, although it represents all that man, 
North or South, really holds dear and precious ; so that I might 
see standing, as now, the beautiful monuments of the Confederate 
dead, but standing beside them the figure of him who, could he 
have had his dearest wish, would have saved the effusion of a 
drop of Confederate blood. When Lincoln stands in the market- 
place, then the South will indeed have become " new," and strong 
"and happy as well. 

ntci^ uniTt'-- h ^it. if^xrt'fu ^i-mz ^:5f^^ 









/^^ 



itclsisos. Sgasas. Aprii !G, i08l. 



rEdilOJ'ial Sraff Correspondcneo of ''Iijk 
Champion. I 
It seetris that Lawreoce ntd Atchibou 
are a locg ways apart ; a.i it werf , in two 
difiVreQt couutries. it h. se'doir. that a 
Lawrence man a.pt)''..j3 on Oommercial 
s! ret- 1, and I remember n.;. the Bismarck 



quarterctaiury oid set:! 
September, tbero-vvas ;-•: 
eon city or county man 
though the Free State m. 
had aa large and lionoraii 
struggle ior Free Kaii>;i 
tended that grpat ocjJKf. ' 
ing. But th' ! 
Atchison wh" 

^0 by without "^^--iUiig iii;-, hi: 
and iookras at IvIa-'.sachuseLtH 



ra reunion laat 
I'cely an Atchi- 

10 be pcen. iil^ 



^Wg:s1?l^ifa"ae mth tae *«i««tH'--rr7*K^«^!t- 
Howl noted the blocI«, and the lar, aud 
the grAvei, and the sand, and the rollt- 1 
that packed theai ail together, and howl- 
ed and jeered at other lows that didn't 
pave their streets in that way. It cost 
lota of money, that ^'Wyckoff," and it was 
not uatii it waa all done that it wa.-j dis- 
I covered that a cottonwood block is not a« 

• hard a/an iron wagon tire. That was the 
■laolemu truth, however, andthecottonwood 
; blocks gave it up at once. The pave- 
ment was a iailure, and now it has aii 
gone, and the invention of the late Mr. 

j iMacadam ban again ass-erted itssup.'-emacy. 
I Then there w,i3 a street railroad in ra'v 
I tiuae, and it ha=i son?, too. I rejnember 
; it was a scurcs of much amusement and 
; "dead leads" of proi'dnity. The amuse- 

• ment was cauged by the new and untried 
mu!e^, «t first enfployed on theiiu^.which 

■i' ■ ' : ' . jf their proiession 
.3 the tre-ck a-d 



I a year 
i'j lo';vn, 
3et, ;jad 



wandering under the maples on Tennessee 
and Conamerciai street?, and standing on 
Mount. Oread and gazii.sg at the town and 
theoutlyiu;^ farass, and the heavy i=hadows 
of B!i:e Mcaad against the sky to the 
southward. 

To an Atcliisoa man, there i3 no use in 
denying i*^, Lav/reuce looks dull. The 
Santa Fo road, geuetaliy liberal, has nev- 
er put a depot at the foot of Massachu- 
setts street, and the platt'-i- vi i^ :,..-. >.:,n;t 
and people generally get 

side, aod ihe traia goes 

them under the l63 of a higa ii 
tbe society ofagri^jt mill an': 
Then yeu climb up into the > . 
flight of steps. 

The first thing I noticed on Massachu- 
setts street w.hs a "lost booni "' 'i' t^ '■^:'^oii- 
en pavement had gone. .1 am 

thing ftjr an ex-local ed;. ,, in-- ^ 

stitution he has puffed in uve 'smuied p, 
paragraphs, condemned as a nui-.anc3 aBd 
^BS 3tJiyiili';?-i'Li'5^f' outer darknee.s^JThkig 



merry scene, xbe swearisie 
gentleniea who'had the wheels : 
riagaa taken off by the entanglJAj- u-uck.-. 
But tbe etrtet railway wllf never evoke 
another sun'e u: i,:u r.-eaaon. It has fji 
lowed the -,; ;■. of the iwininy- 

HendrJi.-i vM i; 

Itse- , ■ ,-- .-;.;;,! 

easy c , ,.^..,. 

now ii. .— t'.;) 

Galvesioa roa-i. f.ad ihu Plcai^id- Hi 1 
road, and ths Oatboadalo road, and ihc 
various other things which cost so nrach' 
for evsrybod)'. 

They have suffered ''a sea chanas into 

-"■ ;iung usw aud strange." TiAey ex- 

1 yet they do not « xi iS. Thf y have 

. -urdeu iu the siiap : f L -;>x that 

^iavo been compr*;: ;>,re 

till a burden. That .■.-.' 

I '.iould came, and yet Iht; .... , . _.. .....r.ce 

^aud county of Douglas go;"^ough, and 
too much. 

Well, the reader rasy enquire : What is 
there left? A ooVxl" deal, as I shall pro- 
ceed to nhow. Th% town has held its, 
own; that is, there are about three ban-' 
drtdmore people than thero were iu 1870, 
and thus, ihouyii it ;•; calculated th:'t r;, 



lu. 



leasV sixty iamiiiea hava'fSma^Fto Kah- 
sas City, Lawrence m*y iifijre been 
disfigure;!, bir- isstiil in the ring. Dwight 
Ifl'baclicr told nie, tiiid raornlDg, tual the 
I. cal trade of tiio towa was never, better, 
if as good, and thrf reitfeon is the dam. 
Ab, that dajti,'! believe the newspapers of 
the city have publiehed h line ior every 
rock and plank in ik. It stetac " " 
W if theg ja^m jT^uld^jypvfc;^ b e 

like a thir?ty uiaa afe'a theatre, \h get lipn 
and go out es;6jry spriug liivd fiU ; but it is J 
still here, and it ha3 built up ''flglirin 



mill?, aad it is the main stay of the town. 
The expression, not worth a dam, ia aot 
only profane but inappropriate here. The 
dam is worth everything to LaVvreace. I 
do not know what Lawrouce would be 
worth without it. Mr. Bowerscck, who 
may be said to hold up the dam, was 
elected Mayor of Lawrence en Tuesday, 
and in common gratitude I do not see how 
less could have been done. 

Beside the flouring mills, the water 
power runs other manufactories, and there 
is a foundry f^r above the dam that uses 
the water after it has passed by, thus dis- 
puting *he poetical assertiorj, "Ihe TDifl 
v;ili never gj-'id aeiain with water that i? 
past." They make, shirts, and barbed 
wire, and baled hay, and many more 
tiiiugs, by water power at Lawrence, and 
every now and then home little factory 
comes in and hitches its wire cable to the 
wheels which are pushed around by the 
busy fingers of the- river. I believe that 
(hat same hitherto idle and turbulent 
Kaw will yet be the making of Law- 
rence. 

Another thing that stays with Law- 
rence is the Univer.dty. The building 
perched on a high wind swept hiH has been 
seen by thajisands attd millions as, com- 
ing westward, ihcy emerge from the woods 
wt^-ich seem to overlap Kansa's from Mis- 
souri. Oue see^'.i.he high prairie end the 
boss high school of Kansas at the same 
■time. 

There are now four hundred and fifty- 
four students at the Kansas Siatc Uaiver--. 
sity. I dare say that imlf our people 
would have guessed at half that mgnber. 
There will be a graduaticg class, in June, 
of nineteen — the largest class yet ; and 
one third of the students are in the colle 
fiate department. The accnmmr.dAtions 



>'are sufficient for the education of twelve 
hundred students, for there are no dormi 
tories or boarding houses to be built or en 
larged. The young man or young womaB 
desirous of attending the University \i 
supposed to be CApabie of hunting j 
boarding place for himself or hers^f. 

I like the Kansas State University be- 
cause there is no slavish following of stu 
pid and brutal practices of Eistern col- 
leges. While in the learned East ths 
question of the co education of the sexes 
is'^eing discussed in some rj'iarters, it was 
aeitkd years ago at our Sl.ite school. Asi 
your correspondent approached the Uai-j 
vensity building this morniGg, in company' 
with Mr. John K. Eankin, he observed al 
young gentieman conversing with ?, youngi 
lady." "There seemed to be no rules against] 
j 4jhis agreeable practice, and it occurred to 
the mind of the beholder that the youog, 
man was quite as safely engaged as if he wars i 
at that moment occupied in raising a cow! 
to the belfryor turning a billy goat into the! 
chapel or filling a freshman's room withi 
tobacco smoke or doing any of the stale 
and ua^ty things which have been handedj 
down from one generation of students loj 
another in the old colleges where ladies 
! have cot been, are not, aud never will btjj 
admitted. It is a pleasure to know that; 
I cone of the hundred year old pranks bvj 
1 sophomores upon frestiraen have foundj 
I their way to Kansas. Compared to the 
j average college joke, the old clown's wit- 
licisms bear the dewy freshness of yester- 
|day. Our Kansas boys and girls are al- 
lowed to make a new depj'rlure. 
< Everything about the Univc.'-sity has 
greatly improved during the year past. 
The grounds are the object of constant 
care, and, the Lord willing, will be some 
day very beautiful. The ir.sids of the 
building is much handsomer thaa the out- 
side. There are more pic! urea and busts : 
in the class moms, and all is light andj 
bright aud airy. I think the ch9,pfd i-ij 
' the handsomest intf rior in Kansas. It is 
also one of the most commodious, seating, 
when the aisles are occupied with chairs, 
I thirteen hundred people. As you go 
boui from oue class room to another, 
you meet lady as well as gentleman Pro- 
fessors. There is Professor Kate Steph- 
ens, who reminds one, somehow, 
I of Shakspeare's Portia ; and there is Miss 
Professor Schlegel and . others. E^ery- 



/6^ 



[body on the staff is youug, with the possi- 
ble exception of Ohanceilor Marvin, who 
id far from old. Quite a number of the 
instructors are the product of the institu- 
tion, the Univeraity being like a factory 
that makes its own machinery. 
I The University has beea long enough 
In existence to have a history behind it. 
The alumni form quite a numerous body 
young people still, and making, as far aa 
heard from, a gallant record, ladies and 
gentleman, or to use the better expression, 
men and women, alike doing well. In the 
Regents' room hang three portraits, those 
of Professors Smitn and Bardwel!, and 
Chancellor Fraser. now gone to the other 
and doubtless better country. I knew 
them all. A brighter torch was never ex- 
tinguished in the dark wateri ot death 
than when Byron Smith passed away. 
His young, bright face fts it looks down 



fdful quarters, ih row-^ ^^ffg&TW3Sn?ftllliy'^ 
tebosvfi by the Librarian, Mias ^yat•oht (I i 
ido not knov,' whether the la.i.v ii ii i 
jpr^feij-toresi ot' tutoress.) has thirt.v-' 
ffivA'* hundred volp.me*, ani will i 
pave an addition of two th-oasaud (dollars | 
[worth of works thi-j year. Lawrence has 
'one of the four or fi.ve.branch«.5 in exisi- 
eace of f he society knowa g?"the " JViends ' 
irH^ouiicil.-' T tie society is compcjed of 
twenty-tTvo lad-.'s v.-lui- tniv'^ wAihcd i;) 



laL the \xo\\t ^ 

and tuifored, 1 

political I 



filil&iof : 
(M'Jiuueiiaij ., . 
of mj^y men tfia 
Professor Bardweil's face is thatof one\f b-w" 
Nvaoi born Njo'late. It has viie. look of Rid-, 
ley ajpid Lfltiuier. Had he lived in their 
,tiaae,|yheai it wss the duty of men to pro- 
test ap.d cry aloud for reform, he would' 
have. worked with rhera and died with 
thera; aad^ a.s brftveiy. John FraseP 
I ki-ew better than either of the othtrji, A. 
Scot(ihnj.an of purest biood, ysS' with a sort 
of French iaipu'iive-.eaH. lie h;aJ tho [>er- 
sever&i'Cfrof hl-i race, h.wt xrti T.ai "canny-'- 
nor cautious. Pfirha;;d he. was more of .<i 
Eigj^faiider tharrmdst. He was eccentric { 
wroDg, r doubt not, at times, tiforgh nor 
seriously so; but he was an able man add 
a brave one. I ^ish there were some, 
more enduring memorial of Idm in the 
University precincts tiian the photon, 
graph. It seems iQ me that hajq 
messure was dealt {■:ut to h\\n in Kkfa^Sst, 
in hia.last days. Ke should haveliv^dto 
old age among us, to be buried at laAC :ia 
the shadow of the walls of the Uaiv^:^ij|y,, 
which ho did .so much to rear. » 

TheUniver-itv makes Lawrence h(H'>k/ 
ish, Four huudred arid odd you&g peop'e 
reading everyday rgakes a inarkei; fi-"- 
knowledge. The city library, which t.lr! 
city belf-V, as every city ouglit to, uui-r 
h a V 8 ■ o vf r five t h r, us and^. vol u m c.-i . 't%. 



ffio-uera liiicory; ai. 
iT'e and ^speriencC-d 
be '•Frijepd:^"; wiil next nttacjr 
■economy.- ■. , ' , : • ', . T 

r ^Cor.sider'ug'fhe ai-aoi'n'o of Kansas his- ( 
'tory wbich"ha'-rbc.f:!i made at. Liwrfence, 
it may seem'singulav to the visitor th:^t 
i:.vs 5ni u ^.slthereis not in the city a oollectioit of his- i 
v'Lirld:*? any 7toric.al relics. ' The explauatiou 15 .Tu'',ge-, 
. It is saivi j Adams, who gaihers iu everythir^^pi iu::-.t 
I orn tDO-aOor 



sort. There 13 a table at the University 
which the Eaiigraut Aid Society use d- 
throughoufc it^ labors, but it i? already 
t;<?kp't.rd for Topek^i. In the cjispf] ot 
the Unive'ri'ity is a bust of Lawr^yco- It 
is a singular fact that this gentleman has 
never t-een ibf: town named iu his honor. 
Lawrence is a city of fchurcheti.: Ther.-^ 
is a.n astoni.ehir!g. number of thera. 
rPly mouth rhi;r;;h, in all that; .h, essen- 
tial to a . p'ace of worship, is the 
most pprferi;'^ cbnrch in" Is-'xc^A: I? 
V;'aUi^ vviliiesseti the most remarkable 
religions ■.-.-. ■■p. r<^r'?. i-' the- history 
of ICan- the Uniu.i. 

Th-^ fetoi; levival,'^ if it 

ccuid-he wni-f^n m; K trn a ?ec;irar'<rt!^nd i 
poir't, would bo a remarkable "bno.. No' 
political campaign tioce our earliest, iias i 
evf V ino^'fdsuch nl-i-scs of peop'e. ■ 

There was a time when Li'i.wrctjee was 
the mo^t famous town ia Karipas ; the 
irr -t vi,-*Ir^^d, find the mo^t talked sibont ; 
Mid .v:.^ thte p'-liticel ce-rer. That f; ay 
H^.-^tes to have passed. It ha=i alleys bad , 
!) represent?-' ive in one bratx-.h or the oti<-^(k 
?r of OoiiRress, but that d'- n- |ot.eoiva^ 
,".!iy mo e, arui it i.i (>;'<,bibiy j;z>lt. is^^ell. | 
It is better to hftve the dam. •iJu'; Law- | 
rence has the mfia'ar.d TT.imeVl «f fehe p 
th.oughtful, contented sort, and tiiemin v.'ho 



Uuiver.vity libmry, r:ow%jDe"w .<iQd hs,-u- j knows tbetri_,VYeli Ji. fortunate.^ _Jb..liM..k 



be^n astandine; complalr ^ iaY 

thfrraometer Oil Mrissachu . . _ in- 

dicatod frr^eziac; poitit. to/ur. ringers, and 
^hat Lawrence society baa a ^r^ty thick 
shell around it. This is oniy mp'i--urably 
true. It may lake tims Id get L^'^xepoe 
good will, but is i.^ woitbt. the trod':)!**, and 
icst;?ys 'ivlih you. * • ... 

Gnz:d upon from th'e hciglh^f Mount 

Oread, tbsre ha? always seemed to me a 

touch of sadness in tbe scene, even on 

the brightest days; a certain undflinable 

"iinetbijig in tbo air. Perhaps it h the 

.nembrane-j of tbr-avrJul massacre, that 

\'.-n never can ■ or ou^'bt to forget. The 

r-ii fise.ma vtry Ptill, and. there i?5 do 

' or stir or rattle from itiia inaple 

.i:iUi!W8d street?, but I carmocbut beiuve 

Tlv'i, tbi»re irt a future for the tn\\n. I 

think I know \vh-at it will be. It will 

"leni-ly acd gradaally grow^into a qiii^t, 

■"li oUl place. A town of well-fe-^^o peo- 

i ■..\vho wiU'Tivfi \<x their o?.» ^s and 

r-end their ettildren to school. "" A fine, 

&hady town," vfhere people will (ujov 

working in the day time, and fittiut- in 

j.the park, v?bich has beenaet in cfder now, 

!and listening to the. music in thQ evenicjr. 

Ths "Wyckoff' an'd street rail^fay and 

bond bowms will aot corine ajraia-, bnt <vork 

of 'muscly and mind will go on uotW LiTV- 

)ice shall eater intOiner reward. N! 



, :) • IVOTiiS BY TiSS VTAi:. 

. Jitorial &!a*rCorrfM)' naeujo or The Chr.m- 

..piou.i 

Slaying iuXsiieas City a few. bour-', T 

witaesaed .scenes of war aad peace^ The 

u- wa^ between tjyo Democrats. ,Y:ho, had 

lien outiu a discasf<ioa as ^tp whose 

•v.ichory OiQ DemocrLitic defeat at the 

;e city electfoa vyas attributivbls. Oi:e 

the di.s^putants wa? a big fellow with a 

ice for two and bowels forfonr, biifc with 

. liver of pi;re^t alabaster ; while the'^otber 

v^aa a bent, bowe(J, grizz'edold man,»y}th 

a pole i:i hia hand 'Kucb a'H is.iwed in 

measuring wood. Occasionally, orercorae 

by bis wrath, the old man would put his 

■ioinreMt acd charj^e the big span like 

J £'f Sir John Edwards' 'Knights pt'bld, 

wiiin tlic at-acked party would acrt;. 

oiit, wich a j)erceptib'le qusv< r ol tgpro 



, -His ■vmc& : ' ' Lcoi olif now ! Tak'e care !*'' 
' and tiien the old man v.-oni^^ shteri6'ff and 

pour a brfiiidside of bad largiiage into hid- 
•eueii3y» It wss notie'eable that -the bi£;;i 

mai.'s coura,<i;e iDcre^aed in propoi-tidn i-i 

■ the squKre cf the distance to the liitle 

■ man. Fin:;!iy satisfied thsitthe v«r§r would 
not rev'uit in t.he de.ath of tv/o Democi'aiS', 
which in a political and partisan saife 
would have bean gratifying to )fasf, I 
moved off, and when 1 was marry tilock.i 
away aiiotbf-r witness of the conflict catae. 
np, "ae il h-j hnd followed iTie for cocsuita- 
tion, and asked iii aa excited manner 
whv, ndien the old man c-jjne upclode, 
atd " laid hin..v3Jf open,;' the hii^ ms,'}. 
diaVt"^lve hioi oneinthe jaw?"' I'eoa- 

! fessed nijstif uakbie to give ar^y-reasoa, ! 
', uiid we wjlked fiiong in silcr.ce, oppressdd ' 
by the U'-ii-deu of the i-r.j'uteiy. 

"^ This was war; the scene oi per^ce^ias 
when I visited tlt« rp;;:n3 of thS Kaasas 
: Oifcy Prtss Clnb, aa'd' looked af/'tho^Sic-. 
tares i li<! the piano "and th'e carpets^ aiid a 
dark ri;>g oa the marble mantel whele I 
' was told a gigiintic punch bowl fiadatbod 
on a recent festive edcasion. It 'via pleart- 
ant to chiKp the herny paki or' F;e>d, and 
be again clasped ia the embrace of .Lewis, 
,»ruiU»te^i to, the cheery v,flic.&& ;af Biwsa 
and Bramble and Sirap-ioa a.nd Wilson sjid 
the Qthers. , " , 

With the benedictiou of tb,e.«e trjjily 
good iiirn on hia fair joun^ head, your cor- 
respondent soaght t»at reln^e of the poor 
'oUt genteel traveler, a reclioinij chair b>J" 
fthe Missouri Paci tic, and beguiled part of 
!the night in talking with an ex-Couftd^r- 
at© abo'jt lh~'it infernal re^jion forsoldis"- 
'ing, East Tenne?sse. He stated that, lis 
rhappened at Valley Forge in the Revoiti- 
Itiou, the snow w:;i marked . by the 
bare and " bieediiig feet of. th'e 
Coafedarats inraaJrv, and the same thing 
happened in the iearCul vvi;iLer-. march of 
the Union aroiy to th^ relicr-f of Ktioxville, 
Which the ediiurpi The Champion will 
remember. At -hwii I fell a.-vieep, and lift'' 
ipgup niy eyes iu .^ip gray of morning 
-ind b'ihblding a Kbaved',' pifiched 'lookirg 
brick bo u.ee with bare blank !»ides, as it 
it bad bec-bcMt ofi' of a Icag r.jw of 
and with pii'zzts on the 
: and" the si^!i '-Wine and ,, -- 

.jeiger,'^ tho v-riter kiiew that he \va3"a|| 



cag r.jw of 6uck 
e back arjd fronf,' 
Beer;ij!coa,-e4 



:^ 



•iuUr U it- bad a Union Uepot as gdod 
that at AicliiSOP, find if it tilst) had a 
iewspaper thpt '"tTJvi neitber pre Aclarnlte 
democratic, uor fool "tow iitie" Eepubli- 
Zia, it would be more interestina:. 

The day esprees on the Ohio & Mic-sis' 
isippi bore away at S;30 a, m., and "a 
jdaisy" of a troin it is to e;o. In spite of 
Ithe wet weather the track was firm as a 
llloor, and the train bowled alontr, thirty 
and thirty-four caiioa an hour, stops in- 
jcluiied. Everyihicg kept out of ita way; 
ismaller stations were not regarded ; and 
there was no atop to speak of except that 
'for dinner at Vincences. 
! Illinoia is my native State, and of course 
that is a matter of pride, but under the 
leaden sky of the raw, reluctant and sulky 
Spring, the low flat fields, the frequent 
pools "of gray, lifeless water, the "'How, 
kv^oiien creeks, the brown and* ^odden 
wiod lands, looked dreary and uninterest- 
;itj^ enough. I fear no great poet will ever 
be^inspired by the natural scenery of lUi- 

TI^ towns looked very much alike. 1 
was interested in one, Lebanon, which my 
eld friend Dr. Dickinson was accustomed 



f From Vincennea to Mitchell, lodiatia, 
Via a country which I should think it would | 
'■^ :j pleasure to leave and neversee again. 
iiills e--'>vered irith fcrubby oak^i", swamps 
'lip.d -.viih beeches, pbostly old fieldg with 
'die life wasted out of them long sgo; 

.-.imnhack'y old farmhouses with cedars 
;sei;.<jut in frout of them. I wondered if any, 
'vi^iisas "aid agent" iiad tver had the ;ida- 
i.iaiuirie cheek to "splicil" in such a re- 
gion. If he took anything sv/ay he should 
have bftn pursued and shot. The cheer- 

( flii^ssenger, as Bob Burdetce would call 
hiiD,, said the fertility of the soil had been 

j exhausted by the growth o? the trees, but 

' a vfry old'rasp, who rf memhered more. 

[about Ih's creation than any of us, paid 

(there never bad been any fertility to ex- 
haust. The cheerful man eaid the country 
wa-4 being restored by bluo grass and stock 
raisit.g. If it were m-r i.ml T would care- 
fnliy and ^rently gfi ■ j-raps and 

then —move to KaiL- : 
.•North Vernon, wi;e;e you change cars 

|Vwr.£,:,a;.a7:ilk'.,;h?-%.\,he,rao3t depvavedand, 
.■loaf^.docfd tlo'kin^ depot in' the LTnitcd- 
States. It looks as if it felt that it wa.s a' 

j poor worm of a depot and would like to' 



was ujceiy j 
peaf i56ht 



to speak of. It is the seat of McKendree Rcrawl off and die. I was surprised to 

CoUeee, which has passed the fiftieth year | ' ' ' 

of 'its'existence. A pleasant y-oung lady 
graduate of the institution, who was «ay 
fellow-passenger, told me the college.^a*' 
i d ;■ rti 1^. ; tisc; ij a b • y I'.' . ' I , f 1 
I debt V W'hfeh;. 'han-iii ofc 
r.cru-lts !it la^t denomiaa'.joniil couej/cs, 
Jbut the lot u the town of Lebacoa ia. not 
[an .entirdy nappy' ono. The Metho- 
Idist JUid classical end of the town is cou- 

fted by a Gennau end of later date. 
Germaus', though peaceable and law- 
raD'.dii'g, do not iippreciat-d the theoio^-y 
fand beveragts of the other end ; hence a 
iconfiict about Sunday and beer. The lady 
^eaid that the Sunday lav/ had been en- 
.forced to snme extent, but the saloons 
keemed impregnable. And this reminds 
[me that the prolubition amendment, likei 
everything else, advertises Kansas. It . 

[makes no difference what it is, drought, v.- as going on around taen^ 
jcvcloneH, graBshoppers, the Centennial or/"'^*^.^^,^P^,"«s'^ ^^ present. 



)e<irn, from a bri£ht cved yonng printc. , 
whom I prei=,s^d into the service to show j 
mr^tbeaiitiquitiesand moM3mi»nt8 of North ^ 
Vtrrnoii. that, a town of l^Sl'O or 2,000 in- j 
vir;i' f.aid oir j,h_e . "^'i\^>if«i«t3 existed in the vicinity 'of guch-j 
oxer Ri.Ck iierte.raliyl- ^'- I'^t. He as&ured mo, hcAvever," that | 
the- Dokcr room of the town 
furrv.'shed, and that a county 
was pending, so life in North Verhon is 
iH.t 3uch a mockery as the depot iwould 
;;ir:lc:ite. 

I: i? rrroper to say thattluring the trip 
i prri.spcuted my impartial and uubiased 
poiiiical investigations. 

The exodua was • brought home to 
niR by seeing, in the St. Louis 
depot, a group of black people, 
one man, severiil women and two 
cr ihr?e bsbie?, all dozing, fat. silent and 
rngifd. They seemed carele.?s of what 
fir(\ ind^fn-r- 
Tb.«v had a 

rt of helpless look. I l(>ar!;e ^ J"6?m the 



the amendment, Kansas is the sister that) " - 

: 'vvavs jrets talked about. The good girl ^■'•-'' '^^^^t they were from Baxter Spring-, 

ai'McKeudive thought Kansas mast be '=''^"^fe goii^-S '^ack to Louisiana. It 

p.oble State, and everybody aeked me as ' f''^'*^^^ to mc that, was the bfst t-bing for 

t^'".the probable results of the nev/ de- '''"^'^ ^'^ ^"'>- "^^^a*^ busuieps had thtse 

tjartliire. 



IJ^ 



children of the sun on a Kansas prainp 
■i'.XivA the howliog blasfs of last wiotor? 
\'. v> ;;s \x,X for such as they to lay ip ?, n-w 
c-Aiiitry the foundatfoKs of empire, i 
.thought t-bey would be better off \\\ their 
-icAbin„besiHe the v,'arm and sluggish wattra 
^ j^of thewiudiiig bayou,, and they were of 



l)e inc 
!men. 

jeartb, 



' Onifee way from St. Louis to No;th 
Vernon, I talked with aa iatelligentaon-^itl 
tleraaa, a commejcial man,, an "Ohio* " 
man," aQ'4 a Ef .vublicaa, who for some 
yearpi haa made his home, or' rather tbat 
of bis family, at Atlanta, He had under- 
gone no chauge ia liia political opinions, 
(hough IjudgP be takes no part in Geor- 
f:ia poUiios, Ho believed in the material 1 
devflope^neot of the South, and said, to ' 
uise his o.vn langaae.-^, that there wasnoth- 
jin tbe way cf procrees <?xcept "the d-— o 
tfti^er." I did not understand him as ap- 
R<yiBg this in a personal sense, but he 
pneant everything concerning slavery. It 
f was the reionantx, the debri-j of the old 
, institution that cheQiJed, the wheels. Yet, 
ite eali, the prosperity of Atlanta was- 
somfethir-i; v/onHt^rful. " 

F/oaa Noi th Vernon to Lr-aiflvilie I rod© 
with a-'reactiociat." a Hi-'urbon cflhe 
.'Urc'St blood. A fir.e loolciag man, yet 
ua the sunny verge of. middle life, with 
a f?ice like a cameo, a niemb^r 
of a liistoric ICenUickj f»raily 



ted to wrong by designing white 
The most unfortunate man- on 

be said, was the. Southern land- 
;ovvni-r. The black man had, in any event, 
ihis living and his cabin, but the land 
jowntr in case of failure wa-i ruined. Both, 
parties were pvlundered alike by the Soura*.: 
ern t.tore keeper. He said he did not 
,mean by t.hi.-( the much abused Jew|i, bbt 



'.hole army of retail, credifc-givinj^ 
deaiere, Jews and Gentiles alike, who were 
ithe Kcoiin.-e of the Souib, T a^kcd him if 
■AX^p- plunder.- d blacks profited by de»t ex': 
Hierieric.?. He said they learned UO^j^OK- 
\i3e said be saw no future for Lauistai^a'or 
Mississippi! He bad left there, anA',tried 
livir-g in Missouri, and wa^ t-oing'to'iocate 



C'hait.snorgi. As for ihs Mis.Hissipp] 
V 'ie, onttoa Spates, th.ey would be 
.-n; ..bor; (1 by f be flood of blacks pouring 
into them. I sdvanced the North- 
!eru, the Kansas theory, that no 
race, {";ceot, perhaps, the Indians, \^ho 
n:p\ ■<■ f xterraination to improvement, 
.u;':! ' V ' 'kapaired of and that the whole 
world was rising simultaneously. He 
ihouaht otherwi-e. One race at a tin' 
.advanced. The Greeks, the Romans, then 
the Germanic people; noAv a branch, the 
AcgiO Saxon, tCrO.k the lead, first in the 
race, the rest nowhere. No inferior people 
hail ever raised theraseivfs nor ever would. 
My companion, as I have s.iid, spoke 



;^i!,lf ^- -•.''^.•'i#'^-®**-!*^Xicti»a..l^i^^ freely, frankly, kindly, with a full knowl 

^*«t4!^, fee.^^13 the ''naa^I "most wif he^''edge of 



t uncommon ia tbe educated SoutherH>>V''^'^^^H-^'^Kg' scr-undre!, and he will .never, 



I TO s^e. He -had served on the mtu;cal 

"" -' (b? Gonfederate army, and since. 

.n, as'he exprss^sed \X, a "country 

. ' >%t 'vith a ta-'.tefor phjfoltjgy and 

kindftds'udica, and for Oieta physical di<^- 

cu .;if>n 'And firie-wiougfit prtlitical tbeorie| 

^lot uncommon ia the educated So-"" "^ 

Sepjiwilfolh^d practioed modieiuo in Wasli 

i^ingtoa coiinty, M-issinsippi, ' and Carroll j 

parish, Louisiana, within the lust four 

years. There was no bitterness in his 

' Voice or maferibr. He did not talk about 

•'abolitionists',' or. "Yiuikees." He said 

thera had been uoout;-.\*5es on .t;he blacks 

— liW one — wichin Lis knowledge, in the 

coifn'ry" where he b'feH lived ; on the other 

haiid'ki fTi^tric;. where the white popula- 

Ikion w.^s fiinall nnd the black Iargs.it was 

the formerv who lived in fe.ar of 

m.urder and outrage. The . blacks, 

left to thenmelves, . were ' harmles', 

but the. .constant lear was that they would 



who he was talking to, and he will 
never change hi.-" opinions. He wiU al 
w;tys believe a negro a careless, thriftless 
sort of animal, dangerous under some cir- 
cuiiist'inees, hoL to be trusted, and on the 
other hand not to be ill-treated ; and he 
w i f ] ^ al w^^ .. kaitfXC M .n Q#;ifiS]t-.bftg*?ex.'.'^ 



i)e a hopeful Aineiican or tbe founder of 
"ivMv South," 

W* forgot our surroundings in our 
talk until wa were on~" He long bridge' 
over the Ohicr, and in a few minutes ■ 
more he w-as at bis old home, his birth- 
place, in fact, the old town of Louisville, 
aud I was af the initial point of a long, 
long ji/urnt ',-. Intiie^dim luoonlight I 
-Maid ijo ;,] ;;v.:- to this mo'it amiable of 

, Bourbons, and f^hnrijy after was installed 
in the comfortable two-dollar a-day pre 

fciucts of the Hotel Alexiinder, where this 

fletter vs written, and signed. N. 

^ TiOlTlsviLLE, April 10. 



/$^i 



^cdtig ^Itsitn^l0iti 



JMO. A. MART~T<, 




<>r« 


^^ 


DFFICIAIi PAPER OF ^ 




:^i! 


in 


i tcMsoK. K^BEai^. Kiy 


^8, 


I.S8Q. 





dl«. 



• MSI. PKR?iS'IS' i\KT'rB-;?fR. 

' Mr. P;^!— •"• .-^r— -^ '■•.-> -^ 
Southern 

letter sum . i . ^ „, „;, 
diirin;;; his extended j : 
this niorniug. Anoti- 'i'^ i:>',- 

preesions of Washinp- 
several days, will clo-''- •> 

readers of The Champion have weicEou- 
enjoyed his fidiXiirable letters. They hixvv 
furnislied, we fhijik, the best view of af- 
fairs, social, indusfi-ial and political in the 
State?, he visited that has been given in 
fany American newspaper. It should br 
remembered however that hia tonr ex 
te-uded through only two of the badly 
"bulldozed" States, where fraud and vio 
lence have controlled or still control iiii 
elections, viz , North and South Carolina. 
He did not visit Louisiana, Mifisi.ssipi)i or 
Florida. He saw au:l hcAva en;- 112;: in 
South Car(>linj' 

that the stories ; . • ' 

methods in that Siate have not been ex;i,t.';- 
gerated, Oa the ether Ijatid, he is con- 
vinced that a better day has dawned in 
many of the Southcra StateSj and tiiKt a 
"New South" is probable, if not crtain. 



^ PREM-riS' l.TBfXKRS-H-.'J. XXIIS. 

From WastiiMi^SfeM. 

(Edllorlal Staff Correspondeuco of The 
Champion.! 
Having lived for weeks in a land of 
reminiscences, it is difficult to break off 

vfrom the habit of referring to the pa^t, 

\-- - - — . - . .-. .,-,■,.. ^ 



even though 1 have ielfc tbe tooutn DeiimG 
me, and ii I may be pardoned for one 
more bit of recollection I will begin this 
letter with a backward glance. 

Mv first sight of V/asbingtoa was on 
the occasion of the grand revicv? of Sher- 
man's army. We came np '>rr3 from the 
Caye Fear river in Nortii C.';rrr,lina, by a 
series of forced marches, e^Ui-oly unneces- 
sary, by the way, and veiy ^^evere on the 
troops in the, hot weatiicr of the late 
spring. Why this foolish crovvding of the 
columns was allowed whoa there Avas time 
enough and to spare, I have never under- 
stood, [t is enough to say that it was a 
stupid and cruel business. 

At any rate we got lieve, and in time 
the grand review came olf, and it was my 
fortune to stand on the e-'St portico 
of the Capitol aiid ■ ^ar ^the 
signal gun, and ses Gen, 

Sherman, with Generals Logan uud How- 
ard start down the avenue with 70,000 
men at their backs, I w.Htciied for hours 
the rasirch of the sun burned bfldicr}-, just 
from the South, with th> r ■ <:'.tg 

drawn over their eyes, and 1 a 

long stride, very ditierent 1.. ; ..... regu- 
lation step. It was n very grand sight 
a^d redeemed W«shingtD)i by iis preseace., 
hi say redeemed Washington, for a more 
^ualid, irregular, wago.i yard sort of 
town than Washington was tiien, it would 
be difficult to imagine. It was* before 
i;os3 Shepard had taken the town from the 
^ire and the clay and set its feet dti 4ho] 
rock of ipaprovemeut. 1 

■ The public buildings were kept open 
sxtra hours during the stay of Sherman's 
irmv in the vicinity, and the "bummers" 
}M walked through the Capitol and point- 
ed significantly toward Virginia over 
iheir shoulders, and remarked, "If ic 
hadn't been for us them hcss thieves 
over there would have got all this." j 
when the soldiers had seen the public j 
buildings they had seen all. The Wash- 
ington of that day, had there been no 
public buildings, would r-ot have been j 
worth an hour's inspection. One might as ' 
well have employed the time in looking at , 
; Culpepper court house or any of the strsg- 
igline old Virginia villages. 
I '^Vith each successive visit to Washing- 
ton my opinion 01 the place has slowly 
improved. The natural sire of the city 
has never struck me as being remarkably 
, handsome. With all respect f<?r Gen. 



^•\/// 



Washingten I think there "are. Ten thou- 
sand bettel: locations for the Capital of the 
United States, and the choice of this one 
left much for man to do, and the misfor- 
tune has been that not until within the 
last twenty yeara has man seriously set 
about doiug anythiug^ and th^-t work has 
progressed in the face of diSculiies other 
than natural, Nevertheleaa the plan has 
been so far worked out that we caji-aee the 
end'irom the beginning. 

Borne bad things have been done. To 
begin witb, a malediction rest on the man, 
whoever he was, who had cut down the 
magnificent trees around the Capitol, set 
out under the direction of the lirst and 
best of American land.scipe gardeners, 
Downing, and transformed the grouuda 
into something like a New Enghmd calf 
pasture ; but this is the only positive out- 
rage that I have noticed. There is the old 
statuary of course, but we have become ac- 
customed to that, and the ancient stony hor- 
rors on the east portico, vjing in ugliness 
with the shirtless Washiogton out. in 
front, have bsen atoned for by newer cre- 
ationa of the artist. Luclcily the Capitol 
seems the centre and focus of the stone 
butchers' eiiorts,which is much better than 
if they spread themselves all ovssr the city. 
The Thomas and Farragut statues are 
evidence of the superiority oi the now 
school over the old. I speak with pleas- 
ure of tho|Farragut statue, as I never be- 
fore had occasion to admire any of Miss 
T-iiitei€rS,2aui'8 eflbrts, and have held her 
resp'^r^ble - in the past for much 

Washig^ion "" -"• > -^ - 



Gen. Thomas' seiieioie 
lookioglhorse, just such a one a^ he would 
have chosen, reconciles us to ttio corpulent 
but frisky steed of Clark Mills' Gen Jack- 
son. 

The numberless squares and little parks 
izrow more beautiful Irom year to year. 
If they can be preserved from some des- 
ecrating hand like that which has nearly 
ruined the Capitol park, Washington will 
be a lovely town in tima, even though 
there should nsvar be another stone laid 
upon auothor by the Government. 

One annoying feature of Washington is 
the uufinished appearance of things. It 
seems as if they would never get through 
tearing down and putting up whole acres 
of pavement on the main thoroughfares. 
I suppose every description of pavement 
devised by the 



of _ 
mind' of man has been 



^ried in Washington. They are faliih'^ 
back uow on tlio Belgian, virtually thq 
(same as the Romans uyed on their roads. 
We have not, after all. improved on Julius 
Ceasar. Beside the eternal mending ofi 
the ways,there is not a publichuilding that 
does not seem in need of perpetual patch-- 
ing. A gentleman who has known theEat- 
ent olBce for twenty five years Bays he has 
never seen it without a scafl'jldiug hung 
up from its roof or windows. The ro- 
tunda at the Capital is disfigured by a 
scafiold. I wonder if the day of judgment; 
will fiud that fresco work still in pro-' 
gress? 

, The most noticeable improvement Hince- 
my last visit is the construction of the 
big and showy Washington market. It 
looks altogether too large, at first sight, 
for a city of no greater population than^ 
Washington ; but it seems fully occupied, 
and presents, in the morning, a very 
bright and gay appearance. There has 
been, too, a great improvement in the; 
matter of depot accommodations, but^ 
nothing can make Washington q, railroa'd! 
center or a railroad city, It ia, geograph-^ 
ically, the most awkwardly situated town- 
in the United States, and the hardest to 
get into or out of. Think of producing a 
railroad ticket three times, aad changing 
your car once or twice beside, between: 
Washington and New York. 

The other eveniog I availed myself of 
the favorite conveyance of the 
worthy but poor American gentiemanj 
the street car, and rode through, the north] 
west part of the city clear around to the 
ancient burg of Georgptown. Washing- 
ton ha'? "broken loo^e" at:;ain in thst^ 
direction. The British embf.ssy ia lopared 
there, and I noticed a group of Chinese 
on a balcony, from which 1 inferred that 
the representative of the a;reat " washee"] 
'nation resided there, Many fine build-' 
ings are going up, but with the usual 
Washington scatteredness. Why a man in 
Washington feels bound to build hi3> 
house as far as possible from that of any 
other person is a mystery of mysteries. It 
will take a hundred years and a general 
order to "close up" to make \"ashington 
really look like a city. 

The town is dull, ot course. With the 
exception of the day of the great review oi 
which I have spoken, I do not remember 
when it seemed to me other wi:<e. During 
the paat week there has-ha^n sickaesa^gj 



/u 



the White House, and coiid"qucDce a post-"' 
poneraent'of that timelionortd iu:stitution, 
the Mariue Batrd concert, on Saturday 
afternoon. The tlouse is J^ot in session, 
and the Senate has devoted iis.df to cau- 
cusses atid executive sefisions, neither open 
to anything escpv■'^ pcrh;ir)s, a key-hole 
investie;alion. Tiie feiLidt'.ii of statea- 
manahip has a very limited i^.haace here. 
Your correspondent availed himself of 
ten minutes opportunity to visit the Sen- 
ate chamber, and noted several facts which, 
he regrets to say, have no importance to 
the American people, viz : That Mahone 
is by no means the dwarf that Harper's 
Weekly and the Washington correspond- 
ent represent him. He is of fair stature, 
is slender and bony ; has a bright face, 
and a nervous, energetic manner, and in 
some features reminds one of a considera- 
bly reduced copy of Col. Gilpatrick, of 
Leavenworth. He does not look like a 
man likely to be sat down upon by any 
number of double-chinned old Virginia 
Bourbons. Senator Joe Brown looks 
like a "Landmark" Baptist preacher from 
the hill country of Georgia. Dan Voor« 
hees, called the "Tall Sycamore of the 
Wabash," is a corpulent man, whose 
width attracts more attention than 
heighth. Senator Beck has no feature of 
a Scotchman, as he is, but has every out- 
ward and visible liign of a blue grass 
farmer with never less than two hundred 
mules on his place. Dawes is the most 
religious looking Senator, and the only 
one who listened with much reverence to 
the rather dull prayer of the Senate chap- 
,iain. SoscoeC 
ive, and was mc 

'for- 

strc^ .. 

his OVVi: "ieg:', ■2^Y: .'--- 

seemstt almost iiccl 

Hia iace is puffy ^ 

^eem3,to me tiKit he > .: cl Ui^r ■■ 

Uke,.hi3 picturea in / ■ 



12:Q5 ^, - 
air tighi 
half an 
Mondav. 

It hp.3 



fas r^pposft W ha< beiwi' r 




othere, to_k>:.ov; -^ 




g:Athered hei :•• :. 




time. I::::'.; :^ 




did ■■ 




laea..:, ,,..-. --. ; 




might be ocne ki-^i,i'..x k 




machinery than, by occuoy- 




and brala of a hi^ ■ 




v/ord/,'burea;i" I by; 




pieco?4>f A^-- ''"■'■-'- ■' 




DUblic Iv.i 


i 


' Fatsir-L 


i ! 


/ooins oi 
,Tatent n • 






wealc'-y 




bo-o 




^^;^^vfe^; :■ 




in hand 




Thia and 




■tjOjOuiocu' 




tbfeafev. ., . 




lowest .'rVi ^:■■. '' ■' ■ " .- .; 


;j|. 


old jiumbufii 




A sensibisp:.' 




no opinions ii 




yesterday, wiU:-. i-- . • ■ 




oueiily compeieQt gul-'.c, . 




;tl\ePeu3ion BureaiT, no!: 


'i 


that I cotild fataom 


t 


pension bu8inea3,t)u' ■ 


• i 


the lie.-etofore giver, r ; 




'mental, cierk aad service w.io corpse 


or 


not. _ ^ , . ■ .„ . , 




Tobegin with.if— ^ ■'-■■ '^ '^-'^'^^^ 


■jhe '", 


Governmental hour. 




•no?t important brar.. 


•■''" 


; vice, was carried. 0:A_i-'i ■■::■ ;.i:::::'i^ ;• 


■]\t 


! by private parties siid reatcd ':■;: eou 


.^lit 


lor the purppse. Tko G :V; r 'lu v 




great houss renter, Tiv 




crowded. Tha clerks pat i 




iy as they cvjuid, and ? ' 


'/ i 


whero anew upp&irii.: 


:a. 


There veas certainly 




■ No one without ,■ 




an idea- of the ovc = 


'" i 


business. In tieve.:-; 


■ 1 


raimber&d package to. ._ 


"'■■! 


reaching beyond 400^000. 




' ■ S12, though thev have r^: 


-" 


■,;e sgs of' 91, fetiil oecu' : 


ion 


1 :; a departmen!; and a i. 


- ?^ 



y/f 



'clerks, and of "Soarse tLeas peasioners af J 
but a drop io the bucket compared to the 
pensioners of tlie rebeliioa, I looked p.t, 
the documents accumulating in iadi-viGual 
cases, and the amouiit of paper spoiled 
was something wonderful. Tha casea aie 
tied up ia bundles of fifty, which jnalio a 
package over a foot. in thickness. 

The back pay or ' arrears- act pncii- ::;d 
enormoHsly the presaurvi on thsbarsau, 
and greatly com plicated; its labof 8. It is 
necessary, of course, to kno\v aii aboufj the 
applicant, and his disability. _ Whor3 c. 
maaof a given regiment received a -);; 
shot wound at thB battle of ^' 
vilie in thf? regular line of his 
his place ou his company an i 
itis comparrvtivsiy easy tqiea^u^hj . 
but where a ia?^ri soveiiOesn years aftc 
war discovers that he is !•- vir;-'-; *- 
matism contracted in tb. 
little job to hunt up thc' 
hisrsaiiment and find ou;, j i.^i. ^■.. .. ;-u 
"rheumatiz" atfci.cked him, why it did acfj 



and how much tb^i"** ™«3 of it. It ia, 
posed that ia no on -i>f the 400,0U':> i!.[ 
cants has the evidence at fjr,-it iUrw;. 
filled the plain requirerrieutc •;;' i'r-: 
I^every case k?,3 i.:; bee'4.::cc.:.. 
|(jr inore evideiice^ 4iy-'' *''■'• ''■ 
vifal qussatioB Is uiet •# ^ 
f^^avits Ci-"veriag every 
and not desired. Thi.-i 
interminable correspondouvC 
torney of the applicant, 
to the labor, if the 
has a friend in •■■ 
of Congress (and he geaer;.u- . 
application is not acted en im- ,::;!: 
in spite of the 400,000 ftppiicatiojia :\ 
of it, the member writes to iiiior; r 
isn't, and as it ia & rui - 
answer every letter rcc^ 
of extra aad faapcrfluoi,.. ...,. .. .-.f ., . 
The mystery is, not that there is dein;', 
that the business is ever satisfactoriij 
tied at all. 

The labor required of 
cient to kei^ all hands ' 
the clerk^vcf any r; 
work any harder than 
government empi''"' ••' 
ments a very re 
it seems to me, ifi 
amount of- technic:'..- ir 
stance, in the Pension I: 
ers are obliged to b 



ill hands i. J 



)|)ension acta in tiieir ^tlFgf^al&d'to'knotf; 
at once the weight of everything o:'; ^ ■' 
in the way of evidence — ia ■shori-, i • 
very fair lawyers, as well a? clerks, aiid ..^r 
this service the salary paid is not^seeaaive 
by any means, 

I suppose the Pension Bureau •-■ '^ 
i subject of much complaint, and I a: 
' tain the growling is quite unreaaO',. , _ 
I The Commissioner, Mr, Bentlay, is cer-.l 
1 tainly not an idle man, if I- know enough i 

of physiognomy to tsU a working person -J 

from a lazy o^. 
I Of course the " woman question" come. 
I up in Washington as it does everyvvh z-i 
I else. The scandalous talk that prev .■ ■ '- 
; in the old days of the •'Trensurygi-"' , " 
I appears to have pretty much died oi-'. 
I The great mass of ladies employed in ti; 

departments, deserve not oaiy ■■'.• ^: 
! due to woman because she .' 

also have that claim, own; 

itself, which bespeaks Eympatiiv i ;;: :. 

widow and the fatherle;;s. It is doubtf;. 

if anywhere else thaa a^ Washington tlx-: 

Government pays its money to more needyj 

or deserving persons. The question ofl 

woman's capacity for what is com^---^ ■•••' 
j called '•' man's work^" isBtiilano; 
"I It is claimed, I believe, in ths i 
[. Bureau that women have not the judic: 
i turn of miad to fit theui for examiuer 
j'^ yet the clearest and mqet satisfactory rc , 
i count I received of the workings of the« 
! Pewsion Department, was from a lady whc^ 
I has been continually employed in it fc;-' 
I ten years. 
! I have never made up my mind on f; 

■ ! question of " civil service reform,": yet 

■ I very brief inspection convinced me tha'; 
' 1 clerk's life is anything but a happy on 

I for want of some system which secajt 
i permanence of position for a least 
- • reasonable period. The Gov?rnmeut eir- 
-ut ploye is in the absolute power of his orb 
t- member of Congress, and, no matter he 
competent, has no assurance of to-morro.. 
The most deserving may be removsd wit 
out an hour's notice to make room for sor 
political striker. I do not not know he 
voften this is done^ but it ean be done. 
|| The immense number c^' ^-^ ."!- 
■! Washington dependent on of; 
f ing, and whose bread is at 
5 disposal of politiciaisf!, giv.:. . i 

I Washington a peculiar tone ;: ■ 

'there may be professions. or .. ,:>^ 



//r 



party on the groimS^ of principle, duty to 
one's country and sO' en, but ijoC bo in 
"Waahington. There ia si rcfi'eshing can-^ 
dor in the political coiiv&-i':itiGa of Wash- 
ington. We hurrah Tor our party' be- 
cause the party i;^" a good thintj for 
U3. I read in the Washinatoa Republican 
the other morninu^, a clalciou?! Isttsr froai 
Indiana, signed '"■ Hosier." No hog 
crowded from the _t'on;jhb7 his more 
lucky or enterpriiijig cjmpanions, ever 
J squealed in a more- o'^en and undisguised 
manner the stoTy ox nij needs and woes. 
''We worked likehor-o: on the ca?*pai?rn." 
jsaya this sufierer. '■''\To.j did •;-- ■ ' 
Why does anybody vvark? For 
course, snd we watifc what we wo. 
Then foliowa an arraignment of tli^iTi evi- 
dent for not standing by "Lheboya," as he 
should, and art bspen threat that if lucilp- • 
Eepublicang do not get somethiag t;^ 
ble before long, they will do very. 1 
work next time. I do not say that tnn 
spirit does not prevail ever-y;vv,^ere to gome 
extent, but I doubt very mucii if any Ea- 
publican paper outside of Washington 
would have published and endorsed guch 
a letter. Fortunately, Wsshiof^ton news- 
papers do not xe\l\:^^^:l^u or s^ir^ik ,lot the 
Republican party cTtha c.-untvy, ?r<l ;'-^<=> 
almost uhkaowa add unheard 
'the limits of the District of Coin 



iuii 



aDd- 



/3S P. cbftnce to 



?llir:g pkice of a God of 
^de a Cenfederati 

, CO I ^:cV--0:^0 !■■- 



fji^ 



Id death of EHswdetIil5r6ught 

i:;j miad How raw arid 

isb we ail w^re ;vt the 

? bs tavev7 away his \\i% It v.r; brave, 
vas not n\iil 
.;; display u , ■ 



CHII.DHOOD. I 

Happy is the little- boy '. 

And his cheeks are as red as a rose; 
He calls up a dog that passes along 

And belts him over the nose. 

His thoughts are golden as Eden's fruits 
His mind is spotless and pure, 

And he sneaks out doors with his grand- 
pa's boots 
And fills them full of manure. 

The angels would bear him away 
If heaven should take him hence; 

In the meantime he roves where the 
rotten eggs grow, 
And smears them all over the fence. 

His eye reflects the sky's own hue, 
His actions are full of grace, 

And he curses around till all is blue 
And spits in his sister's face. 

Noble L. Prentis. 



Price, 50 Cents. 



Southwestern 
Letters. 



BY 

Noble L. Prentis. 

1882. 



So 



[rni 




mn 



Rti 



ITERS, 



By 



Noble L. Prentis. 



TOPEKA, KANSAS: 

ANSAS PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

188 2. 



PREFACE. 



These letters from Kansas, New Mexico, Arizona and 
Old Mexico were writtej; for publicaticyi^^n the I)M/y 



Champion, of Atchison, Kansas, They do not "tell all there 



is to tell about the Great Southwest, but so far as they go 
they are accurate; and their style, or lack of style, will 
perhaps be quite as agreeable to the average reader as 
something more pretentious. N. L. P. 



LETTERS. 



/.— In Which We Start 5 

^, — A Day WITH the Mennonites 11 

^ ^Odds and Ends of Kansas /^J^.i/.. . .^ 7-. . /.^'firr. . 21 

^ A Letter on Agriculture ..../\?t.4*r.^I..fi. ^.'.P..'^.T7. 26 

'^^mountains and mexicans l<. 33 

^,— The New-Mexican Revolution 40 

y^^FROM Las Vegas to Santa Fe 46 

' X~^ouRS IN Santa Fe 54 

<^^Something More About Santa Fe 60 

^^^Aluuquerque and Its Neighborhood 68 

^/,— Socorro 75 

f2r~^ Glimpse of Mexico y 82 

f 2, Something About Chihuahua //^.^..~:{...^ffA?y 89 

/ 4<i-JiECOLLECTIONS OF ChIHUAHUA /. 95 

/(SZ-BoME Further Journeyinos 103 

/p3lExico AND Railroads Ill 

/ T^OuT on the Atlantic & Pacific 117 

/^--Homeward Bound 126 



SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 



IN WHICH WE START. 



Going from Atchison to Topeka, your correspondent had as a 
traveling companion an old acquaintance who had just passed 
through the experience of Americans who can afford it, of 
"hunting a climate." After living in Kansas for many years 
he had become possessed with an idea that he would improve his 
atmosphere, and had gone to what many people suppose that 
earthly paradise, Southern California. Greatly to his surprise, 
the tropical clime, "the land of the orange and palm," the myrtle 
and the rest of the botanical resources you will find described in 
Moore's poetry, turned up, so to speak, with a two-hours' snow 
storm, and the human race in that part of the country was 
threatened with extinction by freezing. This meteorological sur- 
prise party was followed by raw and cloudy skies and hyperborean 
treatment generally, until our Kansas friend was fain to return 
to his former habitation. But not being ready to settle down, 
he took a supplementary journey to Central Iowa, from whence 
he was returning when this narrative begins. In Iowa he had 
been greeted with the rawest and "soakingest" of rains, sulky 
clouds, and that terror of the Kansas soul, mud. He was an 
elderly man, and not much given to demonstrativeness, but it 
was as good as a play to hear his heartfelt ejaculation as he 
looked out of the car window: "Well, this is good." It was a 
perfect spring day in Kansas; and all the world "lying and be- 
ing situate" between Atchison and Topeka looked as if God had 
made it the day before. So we ran along the level to Parnell, 
and climbed the long slope to Nortonville, and looked out at the 



b SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

lovely country stretching away for miles around that little town, 
all bathed in the sunshine, and then went clattering down the 
divide into the valley of the Delaware, (as the sensitive people of 
those parts call it, though Grasshopper will always be good 
enough for me,) and looked over the springing wheat fields, 
brighter than emerald, and then took the long ascent where the 
railroad crosses the sharp divide at Rock Creek station, and then 
we rushed through the cuts to Meriden, and then down again, all 
the way down, for ten miles, until the train dashes out of the 
woods into the wide valley of the Kaw, and the roofs and spires 
of Topeka rise in the near distance. And the sun shone all the 
way, and our traveled friend talked all the fifty miles about the 
State, and said every field of wheat looked bright, from Atchison 
to Dodge City, and that he would not give Kansas for a seat 
astride of the equator; and "all the justices concurred." 

There seems to be no doubt that, according to usage, precedent 
and the fitness of things, a State capital ought to be a sleepy, 
shady town, with brick sidewalks, and with no excitement save 
the annual or biennial meeting of the Legislature, when it ought 
to be all torn up and flustrated, like an old woman with the chim- 
ney on fire. But Topeka is undeniably experiencing a genuine 
boom. A great multitude of new houses are being built, and 
real estate is ballooning. A weedy, unkempt farm, just outside 
the city, which a few years ago the owner seemed to think was 
unworthy of cultivation, is now valued at one thousand dollars 
an acre. The citizens who formerly lived and transacted their 
afiairs, including weather predictions and the political manage- 
ment of the State and Nation, on the sunny side of Kansas avenue, 
have become capitalists; try to look as if they lived in Boston; 
are interested in the Colorado mines, the water works, or the 
electric light; are accused of being financially implicated in 
morning newspapers; and have each erected a residence in one 
of the many styles prevalent, from that of the Babylonish cap- 
tivity to the death of Queen Elizabeth. Public improvements 
are going on; the street cars, long needed, are running; water 
pipes are being laid down on the street; the excavation for the 
main building of the capitol has begun, and the capitol square is 



IN WHICH WE START. Y 

again in the state of chronic disorder which has characterized it 
ever since it had an existence; a huge pile of rough rock indicates 
the site of the public library building in the square; and stranger 
than all, a close observer can see that day by day there is a 
change in the massive outlines of the United States building on 
the avenue. Whatever report you may hear to the contrary^ 
they are at work upon it. 

The question must arise, alike in the minds of the resident and 
the stranger, why should this city, with no wholesale business to 
speak of; until recently, very little private wealth ; no manufac- 
tures; situated in the midst of a farming country which is, to say 
the least, no richer or more populous than that which surrounds 
every other Kansas town twenty-five years old, grow as this city 
has done within the last three years, until there is little doubt 
that it is the first city in population in the State? Some may say 
that it is the location here of the seat of government for the State, 
and several State institutions, but that fact has never made a 
flourishing city elsewhere. As a rule, it would be hard to find a 
duller lot of towns than the capitals of the various States of the 
Union. The sale of hash to a Legislature is at best a fleeting 
resource; while State institutions, as a rule, purchase their sup- 
plies by contract at commercial centers, and do little for the 
sleepy burgs in which they are located. In the case of Topeka 
there is but one answer to the problem of prosperity — the estab- 
lishment here of the headquarters of the Atchison, Topeka & 
Santa Fe Railroad Company. 

It is very curious to look back as I can, twelve years, and note 
the railroad situation here. The great road then was the Kansas 
Pacific. It ran, to be sure, on the wrong side of the river, but it 
began and ended somewhere, and was the only thoroughfare to 
the East and the West. The K. P. was a big thing then. It 
did nothing, however, for the town, except that the National Land 
Company, a sort of wheel within a wheel, a private association 
which sold Kansas Pacific lands, had its headquarters here, at- 
tracting a good many land buyers, and advertising the " far West," 
which was then located in the vicinity of Salina. But the Na- 
tional Land Company went up; I do not know what became of 



8 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

its constituent members. One of them, Dr. Webb, gave the world 
a Kansas book, "Buffalo Land," but I have not seen either author 
or book in a long time. In those days when the "K. P." was 
booming, the Santa Fe was a miserable little road, beginning, as 
I knew it first, at Topeka, and ending at Burlingame, a town 
which was encouraged b}'^ its railroad prospects to issue bonds for 
a woolen mill, which has never yet robbed a flock of its fleece. 
There was one little old engine, and the " machine shop" con- 
sisted mostly of an anvil. The depot, however, was quite as 
commodious as that of the Kansas Pacific, which really had use 
for one, which was doubtful in the case of the Santa Fe. The 
financial management of the road required little attention. The 
road finally reached the Osage county coal fields, and I have 
heard Mr. Sargent, then general freight agent, say that in the 
early days, by stepping to the door of his residence and counting 
the cars brought in by the solitary daily coal train, he could tell 
the exact receipts of the corporation. This was the situation in 
1870. 

Yesterday I visited, for the first time, the Santa Fe shops, 
located here. I found the old bridge shops, originally built by 
the extinct King Bridge Company, a humbug that made a living 
for awhile by securing municipal bonds, building cheap shops, 
and then moving away, or neglecting to make any bridges, had 
been completely transformed. The old shops, considered exten- 
sive when built, served only as a sort of a core for the new shops, 
which stretched away on all sides. I walked all through the 
shops. They were crowded with men and machinery ; every con- 
trivance by which wood can be cut, split, sawed, mortised or 
carved; or iron hammered, cut, welded, bored, filed, or punched, 
seemed to be at work. Engines are brought from Colorado and 
New Mexico for repairs. I saw the famous "Uncle Dick" on 
the stocks. This enormous locomotive was built for freight 
work on the mountain grades. Her boiler looked as large as 
that of an old-fashioned, high-pressure Mississippi river steam- 
boat. When first sent West, "Uncle Dick" excited great curi- 
osity, but fourteen such monster engines are now at work on the 
road. The one engine, the "C. K. Holliday," which I knew, had 



IN WHICH AVE START. d 

grown to hundreds. I saw No. 315 in the round-house, and I 
was glad to see a fine new engine, the first built in the shops here, 
or in Kansas, bearing the old name, "C. K. Holliday," thus pre- 
serving the fame of the gallant Kansas pioneer, who, with some of 
our own Atchison citizens, conceived the idea of this great road, 
and having "kept the faith," and, we are happy to add, his stock, 
has been rewarded after many days. 

The great fact, however, in connection with this road is, that 
every morning seven hundred men take their places in the shops 
or in the yards. Seven hundred men is a strong regiment of in- 
antry, yet that is the force employed in the work of the shops 
alone. All these men live in Topeka, are paid their money and 
spend it in Topeka. All that portion of the city east of Kansas 
avenue, known in the old time as "the bottom," and ten years 
ago covered by the shanties of the colored people, or lying in 
open, weedy commons, is now covered with the homes of these 
workmen. Each little 25-foot-front lot has its one-story frame 
house, with more ambitious structures here and there. More than 
this, a new town, called Parkdale, has been built on the east side 
of the Shunganunga, inhabited, I should judge, almost exclu- 
sively by workingmen. Each of these men who builds a house 
gives a pledge that he will become a permanent resident, and as 
the discipline in the shops at least is very strict, his permanency 
depends on his being a steady workman. 

Beside the shop hands, an immense number of track-men and 
laborers are employed in the acres on acres of tracks and yards, 
which are constantly being extended. 

I was shown a fine passenger coach and a directors' car of su- 
perior finish, entirely constructed at the works in Topeka, and 
this gives promise of a time when all the cars and coaches of the 
road shall be built here, giving employment to hundreds of hands 
in addition to those now employed. 

I have spoken of one division of the Santa Fe army stationed 
at Topeka, but there is another. One cannot stop at a Topeka 
hotel without noticing the large number of young men at the 
table. These are, almost to a man, employes of the road — clerks 
and the like. Their occupation requires a certain standard of in- 



10 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

telligence and appearance, and the "grinding monopoly" business 
has this advantage, that it tolerates no foolishness. The wild 
young masher finds no bowels of compassion in a corporation, 
and conducts himself, in spiritualistic language, "in harmony 
with the conditions." 

The influence of a great corporation like this in a town like 
Topeka is of course very great. There is more or less " Santa 
Fe" in about everything here. It is unavoidable, and I do not 
know that it is undesirable. At the shops is a whistle, which 
must be a near relative of a fog horn. Its hoarse blast can be 
heard all over Topeka. It is intended to call the workmen, but 
when it blows, all Topeka gets up. All the clocks in town are 
set by that whistle. This is emblematic of the part that the 
"Santa Fe" plays in Topeka affairs. 

I have watched the growth of Topeka and of the Santa Fe for 
a good many years, and it seems to be a good example of sensi- 
ble reciprocity. The city behaved liberally in the first place, 
and has been treated well in return. A pay-roll of $100,000 a 
month is a very comfortable thing to have about a town. The 
executive officers of the road live in Topeka; many of them 
have lived here for years, and have established permanent and 
beautiful homes here, and it is but just to say that they have 
aided every worthy public enterprise, and have heartily co- 
operated with the older citizens in the building-up of the city. 

I have mentioned these facts with a good deal of pleasure. I 
think every Kansan must feel gratification in the thought that 
the Capital of his State is not a dog-fennel haunted village, and 
it is but just that the reason of the Capital city's prosperity 
should be acknowledged. For my part, I can see no reason why 
what has happened in Topeka might not happen elsewhere. The 
spectacle of a great corporation building up a town is rather 
more agreeable than that of a corporation constantly making 
demands of a community, under implied threats, and in return 
for substantial benefits conferred indulging only in vague and 
general promises. I do not believe any corporation or individual 
ever achieved any permanent success by acting the hog, while 
the case of Topeka shows that both a town and a corporation 
may become great gainers by a liberal and generous policy. 



A DAY WITH THE MENNONITES. 



There has always been something very interesting to me in 
the coming of different peoples to Kansas, and the blending of all 
of them into a community of interest and language. In my news- 
paper travels I have interviewed a half dozen varieties of "colo- 
uists," among them the Hungarians, of Rawlins county, and the 
colored folks of Nicodemus, who came to Kansas from the dis- 
tant and foreign shores of Kentucky. 

By far the most extensive and notable emigration in the history 
of Kansas was that of the so-called "Russians," which began sub- 
stantially in 1874, and which has resulted in the settlement of 
fifteen thousand Mennonites in the counties of Marion, Harvey, 
McPherson, Butler, Reno and Barton, besides the Catholic Ger- 
man-Russians, who have some settlements in Ellis county, on the 
line of the Kansas Pacific, and whose mud village of Herzog I 
visited in 1878. 

The rallying point of the Russian emigrants in 1874 and 1875 
was Topeka, and that town abounded with sheepskin coats, ample 
breeches, bulbous petticoats, iron teakettles, and other objects 
supposed to be distinctively Russian, for many months. There 
was considerable competition between the two great land-grant 
roads — the Kansas Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa 
Fe — to secure these people as settlers. With its usual good 
luck, the Santa Fe captured both the larger and the better class, 
the Mennonites. 

The Catholic Russians were from a remote part of Russia, the 
government of Saratov, and were the most foreign in their appear- 
ance. The men and boys had a custom of gathering on the street 
at night, near their quarters, and singing in concert. The music 
was of a peculiarly plaintive character, suggesting the wide, lonely 
steppes from whence they came. As I have said, they went out 
on the Kansas Pacific, where they seem to have pretty much dis- 
(11) 



12 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

appeared from public view. lu 1878, at Herzog, they had made 
very little progress. 

The Mennonites seemed more at home iu this country ; and 
securing excellent lands from the Santa Fe company, soon disap- 
peared from Topeka. In the summer of 1875, in company with 
Mr. C. B. Schmidt, then, as now, the Emigration Agent of the 
A. T. & S. F., who had been largely instrumental in settling 
them in Kansas, I visited a portion of the colonists, living in the 
villages of New Alexanderwohl, Hoffuungsthal and Gnadenau, 
in Harvey and Marion counties. The observations made on the 
occasion of that visit were embodied in an article in the Topeka 
Commonwealth, entitled " The Mennonites at Home." From that 
visit until yesterday, I had never seen the Mennonites, though I 
have often felt a great curiosity to observe for myself how they 
had succeeded. 

In 1875 the Mennonites were still a strange people. They 
retained the little green flaring wagons they had brought from 
Russia, and were attempting to live here under the same rule 
they followed in Russia. The village of Gnadenau was the 
most pretentious of their villages. It was a long row of houses, 
mostly built of sod and thatched with long prairie grass. A few 
of the wealthier citizens had built frame houses, furnished with 
the brick ovens of Russian origin, which warm the family and 
cook its food for all day with two armfuls of loose straw. 

The land belonging in severalty to the villagers, lay around 
the settlement, some of it at a considerable distance, while near at 
hand was a large common field, or rather garden, which was 
principally devoted to watermelons, which seemed the principal 
article on the Mennouite bill of fare. 

The site of the villages seemed selected with care, each stand- 
ing on such slight ridges and elevations as the prairie afforded. 
It was summer in Kansas, and of course the scene was naturally 
beautiful, but the scattered or collected Mennonite houses, with 
their bare walls of sods or boards, amid patches of broken prairie, 
did not at all add to the charm of the scene. The people were 
like their houses, useful but ugly. They had not yet got over the 
effect of their long ocean voyage or their life in the huddled emi- 



A DAY AVITH THE MENNONITES. 1^ 

graut quarters at Topeka, where they acquired a reputation for uu- 
cleanliness which they were far from deserviug. Still there was 
an appearance of resolution and patience about them, taken with 
the fact that all, men, women, and children, were at work, that 
argued well for the future. It was easy, if possessed of the 
slightest amount of imagination, to see these rude habitations 
transformed in time to the substantial brick houses, surrounded 
by orchards such as the people had owned when they lived on 
the banks of the Molotchna in far Russia. Of course, it was 
reasoned, they would remain villagers; they would cling to the 
customs they brought from Russia, and remain for generations a 
peculiar people. They would be industrious; they would acquire 
wealth; but they would remain destitute of any sense of beauty, 
rather sordid, unsocial, and to that extent undesirable settlers. 

Hardly seven years have passed, and on Friday last, for the 
first time, the writer was enabled to carry into effect a long-cher- 
ished purpose to return and take another look at the Menuonites. 
It was intended to start from Newton in the morning, but a day 
fair as ever dawned in Eden was followed by a night of thunder, 
lightning and rain, the rain continuing to fall all the following 
forenoon, with a chill wind from the north; but at noon one of 
those "transformation scenes" common in Kansas occurred. 
The sky began to clear, with a great band of blue in the north 
and west; the wind blew free, and by 2 o'clock we drove out over 
roads that you could almost walk in barefooted without soiling 
your feet. We were fortunate in our guide, Mr. Muntefering, of 
Newton, who had hunted all over the country, and had traversed 
it often transacting business on behalf of the railroad company 
with the Mennonites, The wheat waved a varying shade of 
green, shifting in its lines like sea water; the prairie chickens 
rose on whirring wing before the old hunting dog, who ran before 
the carriage ; flocks of long-billed plover looked out of the grass ; 
and the meadow lark rehearsed a few notes of his never-finished 
song. 

A great change had taken place in the country generally since 
my last visit. The then raw prairie was now, barring the fences, 
very like Illinois. At last, after driving about ten miles, Mr. Mun- 



14 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

teferiug annouuced the first Menuonite habitation, iu what seemed 
the edge of a young forest, and I then learned what I had never 
before heard, or else had forgotten, that the Mennonites had 
abandoned the village system, and now lived "each man to him- 
self." They tried the villages three years, but some confusion 
arose in regard to paying taxes, and beside, it is in the air, this 
desire for absolute personal and family independence; and so 
they went on their lands, keeping, however, as close together as 
the lay of the country would admit. Sometimes there are four 
houses to the quarter-section; sometimes four to the section. 
The grand divisions of New Alexandervvohl, HofFnungsthal and 
Gnadenau still exist, but each group of farms has a name of its 
own, revealing a poetical tendency somewhere, as Greenfield, 
Flower Field, Field of Grace, Emma Vale, Vale of Hope, and 
soon. These are the German names freely translated. The old 
sod houses (we believe the Mennonites never resorted to the dug- 
out) had given way to frame houses, sometimes painted white, 
with wooden window shutters. The houses had no porches or 
other architectural adornments, and were uniform in appearance. 
I learned afterward that the houses were built by contract, one 
builder at Halstead erecting sixty-five houses in one neighbor- 
hood. 

The most surprising thing about these places is the growth of 
the trees. I left bare prairie; I returned to find a score of min- 
iature forests in sight from any point of view. The wheat and 
corn fields were unfenced, of course, but several acres around 
every house were set in hedges, orchards, lanes and alleys of trees 
— trees in lines, trees in groups, and trees all alone. In many 
cases the houses were hardly visible from the road, and in a few 
years will be entirely hidden in the cool shade. Where the houses 
were only a few hundred yards apart, as was frequently the case, 
a path ran from one to the other, between two lines of poplars or 
cottonwoods. A very common shrub was imported from Russia 
and called the wild olive, the flowers being very fragrant ; but 
the all-prevailing growth was the mulberry, another Russian idea, 
which is used as a hedge, a fruit tree, for fuel, and as food for the 
silk worm. 



A DAY WITH THE MENNONITES. 15 

We wished to see a few specimen Mennonites and their homes, 
and called first on Jacob Schmidt, who showed us the silk worms 
feeding in his best room. On tables and platforms a layer of 
mulberry twigs had been laid, and these were covered with thou- 
sands of worms, resembling the maple worm. As fast as the leaves 
are eaten, fresh twigs are added. As the worms grow, more room 
is provided for them, and they finally eat mulberry brush by the 
wagon-load. Mr. Schmidt said the floor of bis garret would soon 
be covered. It seemed strange that the gorgeous robes of beauty 
should begin with this blind, crawling green worm, gnawing rav- 
enously at a leaf. 

"We went next to the house of Peter Schmidt. Had I been an 
artist I should have sketched Peter Schmidt, of Emmathal, as 
the typical prosperous Mennonite. He was a big man, on the 
shady side of forty. His face, round as the moon, was sunburned 
to a walnut brown. He was very wide fore and aft; he wore a 
vest that buttoned to his throat, a sort of brown blouse, and a 
pair of very roomy and very short breeches, while his bare feet 
were thrust into a sort of sandals very popular with the Mennon- 
ites. The notable feature of Peter's face was a very small mouth, 
which was slightly spread at times with a little smile, showing 
his white teeth, and quite out of proportion to his immense coun- 
tenance. Peter knew scarcely any English, but conversed readily 
through Mr. Muntefering. He showed with pride his mulberry 
hedges. The plants are set out in three rows, which are cut 
down alternately. Peter had already cut down one row, and had 
a great pile of brush for firewood. The Mennonites relied at first 
on straw, and a mixture of straw and barnyard manure, which 
was dried and used for fuel, but now the wood is increasing on 
their lands. They have seldom or never indulged in the extrava- 
gance of coal. Another source of pride was the apricots. The 
seed was brought from Russia, and the trees bore plentifully last 
year, and the Mennonites, taking them to Newton as a lunch, 
were agreeably surprised by an offer of 63 a bushel for them. 
Peter Schmidt showed all his arboral treasures — apples, cherries, 
peaches, apricots, pears, all in bearing, where seven years ago the 
wind in passing found only the waving prairie grass. No won- 



1(5 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

der Peter Schmidt, of Eramathal, waxed fat and smiled. He 
started on the prairie with $800 ; he now has a farm worth 84,000. 
We went into the house, of course; the door of every Mennonite 
is open, and the proprietor showed us his silk worms and his pos- 
sessions generally. He exhibited his Russian oven, built in the 
partition walls so as to warm two or three rooms, and to which 
is attached also a sort of brick range for cooking purposes. This 
device cannot be explained without a diagram. It is perfectly 
efficient, and the smoke at last goes into a wide chimney which 
is used as the family smoke-house. A happy man was Peter 
Schmidt, and well satisfied with his adopted country, for when I 
managed to mix enough German and English together to ask 
him how he liked America as compared with Russia, he an- 
swered in a deep voice, and with his little smile: "Besser." With 
a hearty good-bye to Peter Schmidt of Eramathal, we pursued 
our journey, passing many houses, hedges and orchards, and 
finally came to the home of Heinrich Richert, of Blumenfeld, or 
Flower Field. 

This place was of the more modern type. The house was a 
plain frame, of the American pattern, but the stable had a roof 
of thatch, on which the doves clung and cooed, as you see them 
in pictures. Not far away on either hand were two other houses, 
to which shaded alleys led. In one of them lived the oldest 
married daughter of the family. Leading up to the front door 
the path was lined with hedges of mulberry, trimmed very low, 
and fiat on top, as box hedges are trimmed; and there was also 
a large flower bed of intricate pattern, the property of the Misses 
Richert. 

When Mr. Richert came in from the fields, his bright eye, his 
square jaw, and the way he stood on his legs, showed that he was 
accustomed to authority. He had, in fact, been a schoolmaster 
in Russia, and in America occasionally exercises his gifts as a 
preacher. In the sitting-room, which had no carpet, but a pine 
floor which fairly shone, was a book case set in the wall and filled 
with books, which usually are not very common in Mennonite 
houses. They were all sober-colored volumes, commentaries on 
the Scriptures, and works on horse doctoring. Madame Richert, 



A DAY WITH THE MEXNONITES. 17 

a very pleasant woman, with, it may be remarked, a very pretty 
and small hand, gave the history of the older books, which were 
brought from Prussia, where her husband was born, but she her- 
self was born in Southern Russia, as were the thirteen young 
Richerts. 

It was decided to accept the hospitality of these good people, 
and the mother and daughters got supper — and such a supper! 
such bread and butter and preserves; and everything, nearly, on 
the bill of fare was the product of this six-year-old farm. At 
table the conversation turned on the mode of living in Russia. 
From Mr. Richert's description the Mennonites lived much bet- 
ter than most working people in Europe. They had Brazilian 
coffee which came by way of Hamburg, and tea which came 
overland from China; then they had fish, both fresh-water fish 
and fish from the Sea of Azof. He said the mode of serving 
food had been changed somewhat since the Mennonites had mi- 
grated to this country. 

After supper, Mr. Richert, his sou, and the visitors, had a long 
talk about Russia. The treatment accorded the Mennonites by 
the Russian government, up to 1871, was all that could be de- 
sired. The agreements made in the days of the Empress Cath- 
erine, what Mr. Richert called the "privilegium," were faith- 
fully kept. The Mennonites did not own the lands, but leased 
them on the condition of cultivating them; the improvements 
were their own. The Mennonites had, in fact, very little to do 
with the Imperial government; each of the fifty villages had its 
burgomaster, and a chief burgomaster was elected by the people. 
The Government transacted its business with the Mennonites 
through a council consisting of three Russian officials, and these 
performed their duty honestly — a rare thing in Russia. The 
Mennonites were industrious, peaceable and loyal; a Mennonite 
was the richest man in the Crimea, and one of the wealthiest in 
Russia. Everything went well until the Government, in 1871, 
announced its intention of enforcing a universal conscription. 
Against this the Mennonites protested. Ten years was given 
them to yield or leave. Thousands left. In 1881 the Govern- 
ment revoked the "privilegium," compelled the remaining Men- 



IS SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

nonites to take lauds in severalty, aud began to introduce the 
Russian language into the Mennonite schools. Russia's loss is 
our gain. 

At breakfast the conversation turned on the wonderful success 
of the Mennonites with all kinds of trees, quite excelling any- 
thing known by Americans, with all their low-spirited horticul- 
tural societies, Herr Richert remarked that one thing that 
helped the trees was " plowing the dew under." This is one of 
the secrets of Mennonite success — they "plow the dew under" 
in the morning, aud do not stop plowing till the dew falls at even- 
ing. 

The history of Herr Richert was that of all the Mennonites 
we talked with. He had come to this country with $1,000; at 
the end of the second year he was $1,300 in debt, but had lifted 
the load and was now the possessor of a fiue farm. The Men- 
nonites, we may say, bought their lands in alternate sections of 
the railroad company, and in most cases bought the intervening 
sections of individual owners. They have been prompt pay. 
Many of the Mennonites were very poor. To provide these with 
laud, a large sum was borrowed from wealth)'' Mennonites in the 
East^ The beneficiaries are now prosperous, aud the money has 
been faithfully repaid. Besides this, a mission has been main- 
tained in the Indian Territory, and a considerable sum has been 
recently forwarded to aid destitute brethren iu Russia. 

To continue our journey : our next stop was to call on a settler 
who wore a beard, a Cossack cap, and looked the Russian more 
than any other man we met. He took us iuto a room to show 
us some Tartar lamb-skin coats, which was a perfect copy of a 
room in Russia; with its sanded floor, its wooden settees painted 
red and green, its huge carved chest studded with great brass- 
headed bolts, and its brass lock-plate, all scoured to perfect 
brightness. In a little cupboard was a shining store of brass 
and silver table ware. It was like a visit to Molotchna. 

At the humble dwelling of Johann Krause we witnessed the 
process of reeling raw silk. The work was done by Mrs. Krause, 
on a rude twister and reel of home constructiou. The cocoons 
were placed in a trough of boiling water, and the woman, with 



A DAY WITH THE MENXONITES. 10 

great dexterity, caught up the threads of light cocoons, twistiug 
them into two threads and running these on the reel. The work 
required infinite patience, of which few Americans are possessed. 
The Mennonites carried on the silk-raising business in Russia 
with great success, and bid fair to make it a great interest here. 

After leaving Johann Krause, we made few more halts, but 
drove for miles with many Mennonite houses in sight, and the 
most promising orchards and immense fields of the greenest 
wheat. I have never seen elsewhere such a picture of agricul- 
tural prosperity. 

If anyone has not yet made up his mind as to the possibilities 
of Kansas agriculture, I recommend a visit to the Mennonite set- 
tlements. It is not difficult of accomplishment, as the points I 
visited in Harvey, McPherson and Marion counties can be reached 
by a few miles drive from Newton or Halstead, on the main line 
of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, or from Canton, Hillsboro 
and other stations on the Marion & McPherson branch. 

It is a matter, I regret to say, of uncertainty whether the work 
begun by these Mennonite settlers will be completed. If the sons 
and grandsons of Peter Schmidt of Emmathal and Heinrich 
Richert of Blumenfeld will walk in the ways of these worthy 
men, the result will be something like fairy-land — the fairies 
being, however, substantial men, weighing about 185 pounds each. 
The orchards will bud and bloom, and amid them will stand the 
solid brick houses, like those of Russia, and the richest farmers 
of Kansas will dwell therein. But there is a danger that this 
will not come to pass. Jacob and David will go to work on the 
railroad, and let the plow take care of itself; and Susanna and 
Aganetha will go out to service in the towns, and fall to wearing 
fine clothes and marrying American Gentiles; and the evil day 
may come when the descendant of the Mennonites of the old 
stock will be cushioning store-boxes, saving the Nation with his 
mouth, or even going about like a roaring lion seeking a nomi- 
nation for Congress. I wish I could believe it otherwise. I wish 
our atmosphere did not make us all so smart that we cannot en- 
joy good health. Were it not for that accursed vanity and rest- 
lessness which is our heritage, I could indulge in a vision of the 



20 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

future — of a peaceful, quiet, wealthy people, undisturbed by the 
throes of speculation or politics, dwelling in great content under 
the vines and mulberry trees which the'r fathers planted in the 
grassy, wind-swept wilderness. 



ODDS AND ENDS OF KANSAS, 



A GENTLEMAN wbo had traveled in Egypt once told rae that, 
so rank is the vegetation in that country, a picketed camel graz- 
ing in a circle cannot keep up with the growth of the grass ; that 
is to say, when he returns to the point in the circle where he 
began, he finds the grass higher than he found it at first. I find 
that something of the kind occurs in this country. The traveler 
or correspondent who fails to visit a portion of Kansas for twt) 
or three years discovers that the country has outgrown him. In 
the four years that have elapsed since I visited the southwest, 
although I have read the local papers every day since, I have 
not kept in ray mind a clear conception of the march of progress. 
For instance, there is a new system of railroads and a whole 
batch of new railroad towns. Beginning at Emporia, there was 
no "Howard Branch;" only an unfinished road which was ex- 
pected to end at Eureka; no Marion & McPherson Branch turned 
off at Florence; the Wichita Branch ended at that place, and 
Winfield and Arkansas City were railroad towns only in expect- 
ancy. Caldwell, now one of the famous towns in the State, I 
knew as a remote hamlet, its recollection preserved only by a 
story that an unfortunate stranger wearing a silk hat, venturing 
into its precincts, had been murdered by a ruffian who, saying 
he would knock the hat ofl^, shot the poor fellow through the 
head. 

At Wichita I found everybody talking of the "Frisco" road 
as if it had always been in existence, yet my last recollection of 
it was as a bob-tailed affair, as far as Kansas was concerned, 
running from Oswego to Columbus, and so east. Now, passen- 
gers from St. Louis pass through Fredonia, Neodesha, and so on, 
to Wichita ; then up the Santa Fe Branch to Sedgwick City ; 
then by a recently constructed cut-off* to Halstead, and then 
by the Atchison main line to the Pacific. 
2 (21) 



22 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

The Atchison road itself, of which the roads mentioned are all 
branches or connections, has in these four years entered the field 
as an actual Pacific railroad, competing for the trans-continental 
business, and has been "armed and equipped," running enormous 
passenger trains; and in the Marion & McPherson Branch pos- 
sessing what amounts to a double track for a long distance. A 
complete line of fine eating stations has been put in operation, 
the Superintendent of Kitchens being Mr. Phillips, formerly of 
the Sherman House, Chicago, where his salary was $2,500 a year. 
Beginning at Atchison, the eating stations are Topeka, Florence, 
Coolidge, La Junta, Raton, Las Vegas, Wallace, Hot Springs, 
Demiug and Laray. To these will be added, in a day or two, New- 
ton, with a fine railroad hotel. This will divide the business with 
Florence, now the most important of the stations, as two branches, 
the Marion & McPherson and the old Eldorado Branch, there 
connect with the main line. We were accustomed to speak, 
years ago, of Kansas as "gridironed with railroads," but a mul- 
tiplicity of new bars have been added within the last two years, 
not to speak of four. 

The most unchangeable-looking country so far familiar to me 
on what may be termed the old Santa Fe, is that between Topeka 
and Emporia. The scenery consists, as aforetime, of coal shafts 
and wood-built mining towns, and side-tracks full of coal cars; 
and yet Kansas cannot be made to look anywhere like a genuine 
mining country. There are no sooty hills, and the sky is too vast 
for pollution by smoke. Kansas will never look like Pennsyl- 
vania, nor ever possess a Pittsburg. It is one of her many good 
points to be the tenth coal-producing State of the Union, without 
being begrimed. In the Osage coal country, pick and plow do 
not seem to work well together, but great herds of cattle are graz- 
ing a few feet above the coal beds; and I saw in Cherokee county 
once a fine wheat field, white for the harvest, and the miners were 
digging the coal from under it. 

Passing Emporia, the gradual agricultural transformation of 
the Cottonwood valley is seen; but the first remarkable change 
in the surface of the earth is at what was once called Cottonwood 
Falls station, now Strong City. The quarries here, from whence 



ODDS AND ENDS OF KANSAS. 23 

came the stone for the great bridge at Atchison, have been devel- 
oped enormously, and a smart little town has grown up around 
them. Coal, cattle, wheat and stone form a striking combination 
of products along one line of railroad. 

At Newton, as one sees it now, it is hard for a stranger to be- 
lieve that a place named in honor of a staid and godly Massa- 
chusetts village presented, for the first season of its existence, 
the "fittest earthly type of hell." I saw it once during that sum- 
mer, sweltering in its sinful ugliness in the noonday sun, a fes- 
tering ulcer on the face of earth. One street — the present Main 
street — was lined with an irregular array of hastily-constructed 
shanties — gambling-rooms, drink-mills and the like — while, as 
if scorned even by these places, in a suburb stood the dance 
houses, long, low, unpainted, and excelled in hideousuess only by 
the wretched, bloated, painted, blear-eyed women who dwelt there, 
and the bow-legged, low-browed. Indian like cow boys who con- 
sorted with them. These creatures finally seemed to grow wild, 
and went to killing each other. According to tradition, eight 
corpses were the result of one night's fusillade. These events 
had at that time a graphic local historian. He combined the 
functions of a man of letters and a musician in a dance house. 
It was literally a case of "all that he saw, and part of which he 
was." What fate induced or seduced a man of his intelligence 
to herd with the scum of the earth, and form part of it, I never 
knew ; nor do I know what finally became of the writer who se- 
lected for himself, amid such surroundings, the pretty 7iom deplume 
of "Allegro." Newton's wild infancy was not only described 
in prose, but our own Theodore F. Price wrote some wonderful, 
weird verses on the subject — a narrative poem called "Newton, a 
Tale of the Southwest." By the way, the Chamjnon, which keeps 
the record of all the Kansas bards, and has often mentioned Theo- 
dore, can add another paragraph to his story. The "minstrel 
boy" has gone, not to the war, but to far Vancouver. It seems 
to be a cold day for poetry in Kansas. 

The case of Newton and a dozen other towns in Kansas illus- 
trates the final triumph of goodness, or at least respectability. 
Newton is now a fine, growing town, with the usual Kansas com- 



24 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

plement of newspapers, school houses, churches, brick blocks, 
and banks enough to hold all the money of all the editors in 
Kansas, beside a really luxurious and aesthetic jail. White cot- 
tages and gardens now cover and obliterate the old, hard, sun- 
baked cattle trail. And so it is that while nobody ever heard of 
a decent town becoming a nest of land pirates, gamblers and 
ruffians, with the poor women who live with such, Newton, Abi- 
lene and many more have risen above such beginnings. A very 
old book, which possibly I do not quote with accuracy, says that 
the name or memory of the wicked shall rot; and it is even so. 
The evil is transient; it is hunted and fleeting. Go to Abilene 
or Newton now, and you may have pointed out to you, half hid- 
den by other buildings, a battered, wretched wreck of a house, 
the old "Alamo," or "Gold Room," or some place worse, its rec- 
ollection kept alive by some dark and evil deed ; but even these 
wretched monuments of shame soon disappear. Even the graves 
of those who died in the fierce brawls of the old time are lost. 
Their dust does not repose in the "God's acre" of the modern 
town. It has been often noted that the dangerous classes in large 
cities huddle together in dark places, in narrow streets and lanes 
and courts, but in time a great street or boulevard is driven 
through the doleful place; the sunlight is let in, and the misera- 
ble flit otherwhere. And so it is, even in Kansas. As the view- 
less air and the turbid river purify themselves, so does the moral 
atmosphere. 

At Wichita, on Sunday, I saw more corroboration of the theory 
here advocated. Wichita had its turbulent period, but it seems 
to me that the town grows wider and roomier, and prettier and 
finer, every time I revisit it. A photograph taken a few years 
ago hangs in a gallery showcase. In the picture every house on 
the town site stands up in bare distinction, "all by itself" To- 
day, at the distance of a mile from town, hardly anything can be 
seen save a few high roofs, and the church spires above the bil- 
lowy green. There is one street, Lawrence avenue I believe 
they call it, which seemed to me as fine in its way as Euclid ave- 
nue in Cleveland. Going to the Methodist church, I found that 
new sanctuary a trifle too gorgeous, if there was any fault. I 



ODDS AND ENDS OF KANSAS. 25 

doubt if Bishop Asbury would have liked it. He might have 
thought the I. H. S. in the stained glass windows a "relic of 
Popery." But Bishop Asbury has been dead a long time, and 
ecclesiastical ornamentation is better than "Rowdy Joe" and 
"Red," subjects once more prominent in Wichita life and con- 
versation than church architecture. And, besides, the preacher 
in his prayer gave thanks for the creditable manner in which the 
pupils of the public schools had acquitted themselves at the " ex- 
hibition," which seemed a sensible idea, and smacking of Kan- 
sas withal. 

Notice has often been made of the interest taken in Kansas by 
men and peoples of every variety. At Wichita I learned that the 
slant-eyed and much-whooped-about Mongolian had joined the 
polyglot crowd who are engaged in the making of Kansas. The 
books of the register of deeds for the county of Sedgwick show 
that two eminent Celestials, Chin Lan Pin and Yung Wing, have 
thousands of dollars loaned on real estate in the county, and that 
they stand to quite a number of American citizens in the inter- 
esting relation sustained by a mortgagee. The "Chinee" may 
be a heathen, but his head is spherical when it comes to putting 
his money where it will do the most good. 



A LETTER ON AGRICULTURE. 



The writer of this has long been of the opinion that the extent 
and variety of his ignorance on the subject of farming well-nigh 
qualify him for the editorship of an agricultural journal, but 
has so far resisted the temptation which his misinformation pre- 
sented, to write on the tillage of the soil, except so far as his 
position as a Kansas journalist has obliged him to take part in 
the everlasting "rain-belt" controversy, without which no Kan- 
sas newspaper file is complete. But the hour has come, and your 
correspondent proposes to enter the lists as writer on the first of 
human occupations, promising, meanwhile, to allay the possible 
fears of the readers of the Champion, that this is his last appear- 
ance in that capacity. 

In a former letter, the agricultural and horticultural experi- 
ence of the Mennonites in Marion, McPherson and Harvey 
counties has been mentioned. It did not require an acquaintance 
with the reports of the Secretary of the Kansas State Board of 
Agriculture for the past ten years, more or less, to know that 
the Mennonites had absolutely succeeded. Nearly everything in 
Kansas is going to succeed sometime. It is next spring that 
-property is going to be higher. "Ad astra per aspera — after 
awhile," should be the motto of our State. The Mennonites, 
however, have already "made it," Having been an agricultural 
writer but a few minutes, I do not know what the best and most 
learned authorities consider a successful farmer in this western 
country, but I should call that farmer a success who gets out of 
his land a comfortable shelter, plenty to eat, respectable clothing 
for all hands, pleasant surroundings, as far as trees and flowers 
can make such, means to give his children a sensible education, 
and a surplus of money sufficient to buy books and newspapers 
enough to prevent his household from relapsing into ignorance; 
and who, above all, is out of debt. I do not look upon farming 
(26) 



A LETTER ON AGRICULTURE. 27 

as primarily a mouey-makiug business, farther than I have indi- 
cated. In this view of the case, the Meunonites have succeeded. 
They have in possession nearly all I have indicated, and could 
have the rest if they wished. They live in a good country, but 
no better than is to be found all over the eastern half of Kansas. 
They have encountered the same seasons, the same grasshoppers, 
the same drouths, the same hot winds, that other settlers have ' 
contended with, and yet they have remained on their farms while 
thousands of gifted Americans have fled precipitately to the 
East, carrying a tale of disaster as they went. While many a 
settler longer in the country lives in a bare, bleak, wind-shaken 
and sun-blistered shanty, with a few desolate, unfeuced, dying 
peach trees adding horrors to the scene, the Mennonite dwells in 
the shadow of his mulberries and apricots, and grows fatter every 
day. 

It is true that some of the Mennouites brought considerable 
money with them from Russia, but others brought nothing. It 
seems plain eno\igh, all things considered, that the difference be- 
tween failure and success in Kansas, taking counties like Harvey, 
McPherson- and Marion as examples — and there are plenty of 
others as good — lies in the men and women, and not in the soil 
or climate. The patient, toiling Mennonite is doubtless consid- 
ered dull by some of his American neighbors, but he praises 
Kansas, and says she is the best country yet, and stays with her. 

My next "skip" in the collection of this, my first agricultural 
report, was to Lamed. That town, I believe, lies in the western 
or third belt. Possibly I am mistaken, but if so the meteoro- 
logical and agricultural savants can correct me. I went to see 
about sorghum. The Champion has always been an advocate of 
Kansas syrup, and its belief in Kansas sugar has rivaled that of 
the late LeDuc himself It may be said that the "sorghum lap- 
per" has never had a more faithful friend than the Champion ; 
and so, knowing that Mr. John Benuyworth, the pioneer sugar 
manufacturer of Kansas, had invested a good deal of money in 
the neighborhood, a stop at Larned was deemed advisable. In 
company with Col. Ballinger, of the Chronoscope, the sugar fac- 
tory was visited. A closed building was found, filled with silent 



'OonM- 



28 SOUTH AVESTERN LETTERS. 

and costly machinery and a strong smell of sorghum — nothing 
more. Disaster appeared to have attended the enterprise from 
the start. At first the water supply was deficient; then the ma- 
chinery broke, and could not be repaired this side of Cincinnati ; 
then the cane, from frost or some other cause, soured, and would 
not make sugar. Mr. Benny worth demonstrated that sugar could 
be made; but the factory is now closed, and no one appeared to 
know when, if ever, it would be reopened. This looked like the 
failure of a Kansas enterprise, something that it is gall and worm- 
wood for a Kansas man to acknowledge. But Ballinger's flag 
was still there. He called attention to the fact that Mr. Benny- 
worth was still an extensive planter of sorghum cane, and de- 
clared that the cane itself was worth more than all the sugar that 
ever had been or ever would be made. He declared that it was 
the great modern discovery in the way of feed for cattle, sheep, 
and even hogs; that a ton of it — worth $2 — was worth an in- 
definite amount of prairie hay; and generally, that the path of 
prosperity for Pawnee county lay through a sorghum patch — 
that and broom corn, of which $100,000 worth was sold in Paw- 
nee county last season. Cattle, sheep, sorghum cane and broom 
corn was Dr. Ballinger's prescription for Pawnee county. As to 
corn, he thought enough should be planted for the family roast- 
ing ears, and wheat enough to go to mill and keep up appear- 
ances. There was no end to the cattle and sheep business. There 
were 300,000 sheep between Speareville and Larned, in the coun- 
try tributary to the Santa Fe road, and it was just as easy to have 
1,000,000. Rice corn, he said, was a delusion and a snare. 

At the State Fair at Topeka last fall, enormous onions and 
other vegetables were exhibited by the A. T. & S. F. people as 
raised by irrigation at Garden City, Sequoyah county. As the 
place was approached, the stories of the success of the enterprise 
varied. Most were to the effect that a few onions were about all 
the landscape afforded, and a determination once formed to visit 
the place was abandoned. But at five o'clock this morning, as 
the brakeraan called "Garden City," this determination was re- 
voked, and a very pleasant and instructive day has been passed 
in consequence. 



A LETTER ON AGRICULTURE. 29 

The country around Garden City is very large. The world 
never looked larger than from the depot platform this morning. 
A vast plain, as flat as a floor, stretched away to the east, the 
west, the north. On the south flowed the hankless, treeless Ar- 
kansas, reminding one of a human eye without lashes; beyond 
the river was the line of yellow sand-hills. It was very still 
when the train with its rush and roar had come and gone. A 
camp fire glowed ofl" toward the river, and a group of white-cov- 
ered wagons stood near. The sun rose suddenly, as if it came 
up over the edge of the world at the horizon. The little 
town of Garden City, the usual scattered collection of frame 
houses, sod stables, farm wagons, and agricultural implements 
which develop a new settlement in Kansas, had not yet got up to 
breakfast. Four men, with carpet-bags, came out of the east 
somewhere and walked literally up the track to the westward. 
They were going up thousands of feet more into the fastnesses of 
the Rocky Mountains. The place is one of the steps of the 
mountains; this seeming plain is really a slope of 3,000 feet above 
the level of the sea. The only genuine mountain I ever climbed 
was hardly as high. Never have I been so impressed with the 
vastness of this western land. It was almost oppressive. 

A few hours later, I set about looking at the results of the first 
irrigation experiment in Kansas. I had heard that my old ac- 
quaintance, C. J. Jones, had dug a ditch and raised a garden, 
and that was about all. I am frank enough to say that I have 
always heartily despised the name of irrigation and the country 
that resorted to it. Still, everything should be heard in its de- 
fense. 

In company with Mr. I. R. Holmes, I rode over the lands 
where the first ditch was opened, and the ground broken. It 
looked like what it is — a great newly-made garden. It was laid 
out in beds of large size, each with a foot-high ridge around it, 
like the bottom crust of a pie. These are the dykes through 
which the water is let on the beds. Running the length of the 
fields parallel with the river was a ditch with swift-running water 
one or two feet deep; the water ran like a mill-race, and did not 
creep as in a canal. Then there were lateral ditches crossing the 



30 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

fields, a ridge ou each side preventing overflow. Men were at 
work watering this bed or that, breaking a hole in the low dyke 
with a spade, and then the water crept, slowly widening, over 
the face of the earth. Some beds were black with recent water- 
ing. I walked about over the little fields. The earth was soft 
like ashes. There is not a stone as big as a baby's foot for miles 
and miles. All sorts of vegetables had been planted ; some grain 
was growing, and there was a field of the curious dark-green al- 
falfa, which sends its roots to .water, six, eight, or ten feet, and 
can be cut four or five times a season. 

Everybody was enthusiastic. A man from Greeley, an irriga- 
tion experiment, said that colony was the richest agricultural 
community in the world, and that this was a better location. A 
patch of onions about big enough for an ordinary door-yard was 
said to have yielded $300 worth of onions last year. Mr. Wor- 
rell, who has followed irrigation for thirty-two years in Califor- 
nia, was enthusiastic, and showed cottonwoods fourteen feet high, 
the growth of a single season. 

We traveled out of the bottom to the plateau, to which the 
rise is almost imperceptible. It stretched away, nobody knows, 
I think, how far. It was buflTalo grass, sage brush, cactus, soap 
weed; here and there a flock of sheep with an unmoving shep- 
herd; immense, and almost soundless and solitary. A ditch was 
crossed on this high plateau, and all of it can be watered, and 
will be. 

And how many people know what is being done in this out-of- 
the-way place — in this desert — if there is one in Kansas ! Mr. 
Bedell, the surveyor, classified the ditches for me as follows: 

No. 1, owned by Senator Plumb and others, composing the 
Great Eastern Irrigating Company, leaves the river seven miles 
above Lakin, is thirty-four feet wide, is surveyed for twenty-two 
miles, and will water the plateau in Sequoyah and Kearney 
counties. Work has begun, and will be pushed to completion. 

No. 2 leaves the river on the south side, nearly opposite; owned 
by gentlemen connected with the Santa Fe road, called the Min- 
nehaha Irrigation Company; is twenty-eight feet wide, twenty- 
two miles long, and will water bottom lands on south side of the 
river. 



A LETTER ON AGRICULTURE. 31 

No, 3 leaves the river at Deerfield ; twelve feet wide, fifteeu 
miles long; has water running, and will irrigate the plateau north 
of Garden City. 

No. 4, Jones's ditch, leaves the river at Sherlock; waters bot- 
tom around that station. 

No. 5, original ditch, waters bottoms between Garden City and 
the river; is in operation as already described. 

Now read the figures. This system, as completed, can now 
water 60,000 acres; the whole system, as at present devised, will 
be completed within six months, and will water 262,000 acres, 
which means that land now waste will be made to yield every 
vegetable, fruit and flower known to Kansas. It means that at 
an elevation of 3,000 feet above the sea it is proposed to cultivate 
a great field or garden 262,000 acres in extent. People here, 
who seem to be cool-headed and reasonable, say it will be done. 
They tell me that in a very few short years, at farthest, I will see 
this recent solitude peopled, and that old hackneyed Kansas real- 
estate phrase about the "desert blossoming like the rose," made 
a reality. 

This is a great scheme; one that, in its amplitude, might well 
attract the genius of Colonel Mulberry Sellers; and yet the gen- 
tlemen interested are the farthest possible removed in character 
from that enthusiastic projector. They are backing their opinion 
with a great deal of money. 

The main ditches, or canals, are excavated with plow and 
scraper, and water is furnished from them at $1 per acre of land 
cultivated during the growing season. Mr. Bedell believes the 
whole Arkansas bottom, as far as Great Bend, 165 miles, can be 
successfully irrigated, though it is doubtful if there are many 
points where as much land can be brought under water as at 
Garden City. 

There is something fascinating in the idea of every man being 
his own rain-maker, and being independent of shifting clouds and 
uncertain winds. The enthusiastic irrigator with a shovel can 
bring on a light or heavy shower, and by lifting a sluice gate 
organize a thunder storm, and he can run all the varieties of 
elemental disturbance at once if he chooses. The " windows of 
Heaven " are nothing to him : he runs the machine himself. 



32 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

My own doubt was, whether the Arkansas would at all stages 
supply the water needed. Mr. Bedell has measured the river 
repeatedly, and says the supply is practically inexhaustible. The 
Arkansas is a two-story river, and if the water in sight were ex- 
hausted, another supply would rise from the river's bed. I have 
heard this sub-irrigation or basement theory disputed, but there 
seems to be no reasonable doubt of its correctness. A hole dug 
in the ground many feet away from the river or from any irriga- 
tion ditch soon begins to fill with water. 

So we have the start of another of the numerous "big things" 
of Kansas. It has just begun ; last year there were 500 acres in 
cultivation; this year 1,200; next year — but it is time to end 
the first lesson in agriculture. 



MOUNTAINS AND MEXICANS. 

The train bound west that r^cbed Garden City on tbe even- 
ing of Thursday, May 4th, was crowded with people. Where 
they were all going, or why they were going, it would puzzle a 
wise head to answer; but the long train was full. The smoking 
car and the first coaches were filled with Italians, bound to work 
on the railroads in the mountain country; the following day 
coaches and the three sleepers were filled with a mixed multitude 
of men, women and children, destined for a hundred different 
points in the immense country of the Rocky Mountains, and be- 
yond them to the Pacific. Some of the men were going in search 
of health ; some to prospect for mines; some to look after invest- 
ments already made; some to buy cattle; and a large number, 
it seemed, without any definite purpose, hoping that in the land 
to which they were going something would turn up; and the 
women and children were going because men had gone or were 
going, since it is the lot of wives and babies in this world to fol- 
low on. 

One reason, I think, why so many people travel now, is because 
they can do so easily and comfortably. Let but the color of 
gold show in mines, or cattle, or town lots, or anything else which 
can be bought or sold, and men will start for it a thousand miles 
on foot; given a wagon road, and hundreds will follow with 
teams; given a railroad, and thousands join the rush. So it is 
that twice every twenty-four hours these great passenger trains 
of the Atchison, Topeka it Santa Fe road fly back and forth 
across the west half of the continent; and between them the 
slower emigrant train, loaded to the last inch. Money and skill 
have so perfected railroad transportation, so increased its speed 
and comfort, that a great army of people cast their eyes on ob- 
jects a thousand miles oflT, and straightway arise and buy a rail- 
road ticket, rather than stay at home. 
(33) 



34 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

The last object at which a Kansas party, who sat together, 
looked with interest, was the beginning of the great irrigating 
ditch above Lakin, of which mention has been made in a pre- 
vious letter. It wound around in the low lands like a serpent, 
bound in time to carry water, which is life, to thousands of Kan- 
sas acres. 

The next object of interest reached was the railroad eating 
house at Coolidge. The supper here was a marvel. Without a 
butcher, or grocer, or gardener, within hundreds of miles, here 
was an elegant supper, which might be said to have been brought 
from the ends of the earth and set down in the middle of the 
American desert. There is no use for fairy tales any longer. 
They have lost the charming feature of impossibility. All they 
tell happens now every day. The railroad is the magic carpet of 
the old story, which transports the wisher and his supper whither- 
soever he will. 

The long stretch of level plains, lonely and monotonous, was 
traversed in the night. One great State was left, and the bound- 
ary of another long since crossed, when the writer awoke, just at 
what North Carolinians call the "daylight down," to look out of 
the window at a new country. The train was evidently climbing 
a long and steady ascent. The prairie rose in a great yellow 
slope to what looked like an immense line of ruined earthwork ; 
and isolated, stunted trees were scattered about. The sun had not 
fully risen above the horizon, and the pallid full moon was still rid- 
ing high. Suddenly, against the cold gray of the sky, appeared 
what looked like a great amethyst, with streaks of pearly white, 
and below it an enormous sloping mass of dark purple, shading 
away to brown at the base. It was at last, after hundreds of 
level miles, a mountain. One who has never left the plains in 
which he was born can know nothing of the feelings with which 
one whose childish eyes daily looked, at morn and eve, upon the 
solemn splendors of a great mountain, gazes, after months or 
years of absence, once more upon the mountain's eternal face. 
It is the face of an old friend, no matter in what land it may 
greet the sun, or gather round itself the mantle of the storm. 

As the train moved on — now advancing toward the mountain. 



MOUNTAINS AND MEXICANS. 35 

now turning from it — the sun rose, and the great shadows thrown 
by the mountain upon itself shifted from time to time. What 
first seemed a solitary peak, changed to two, with a great gorge 
between them; and stretching away, like the foaming wake of a 
great ship, was a range of lower mountains, white with snow, as if 
the ice of an arctic sea had suddenly been broken up, and as the 
mighty waves had sprung heavenward, bearing the broken ice- 
floes, they had been frozen again to eternal stillness. The moun- 
tain was the Spanish Peak, and the occasion was a memorable 
one to him who writes of it, since it was his first sight of any por- 
tion of the Rocky Mountains. 

Comparisons were then in order, and many a mountain view 
was recalled, but in vain. The Alps, the White Mountains, the 
Green Mountains, the Alleghauies, the Blue Ridge — none of 
these resemble the Rocky Mountains, save in the fact that they are 
elevations. There is, between all these and the Rocky Mountains, 
this great difference: they are mountains which may be loved; 
which have something human about them; in whose shelter men 
rear their dear homes ; but the Rocky Mountains are not so. They 
are the frown of Nature in some moment of convulsive agony. 
These mountains, seen at earliest morning or at sunset, seem to 
relax somewhat, if I may use the expression, but in the full light 
of day they are always gray, and cold, and stern. 

We were soon amidst scenes as unlike Kansas as possible. 
Mountains rose on both sides. The Raton range appeared in full 
view, with Fisher's Peak and its pulpit-like crowning rock near 
at hand. Foot-hills mingled in confusion; the world seemed left 
half finished; patches of little green, irrigated fields along the 
Purgatoire, and adobe houses, plainly told that we were in a 
semi-Mexican country; and so we came to Trinidad. 

Some people see one thing in a new town; some another. 
Trinidad has, to be described, gas-works, water-works, great out- 
fitting stores, manufactories, banks, and all that goes to make up 
a smart town ; but the writer, having seen and written about all 
that elsewhere, some five hundred times, was more interested in 
matters new to him, to wit, Mexicans, adobes and burros. 

The former were very numerous. Trinidad was originally 



36 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

settled in 1860, by New-Mexican people who came up from the 
southward. The Americans have come in and built a modern 
town, and with the latest improvements. But there are six 
thousand Mexicans in the county of Las Animas, and they are 
represented in the government of the county and in the Legisla- 
ture. They are numerous at all hours in the streets of Trinidad ; 
not lounging in the sun as they are usually represented, but 
engaged in various manual avocations. They are not picturesque. 
They wear slouched American hats, instead of sombreros, and 
pants without suspenders, and coats of the ready-made order. 
That garb does not become anybody but the Northern races. In 
coat and pants all the dark people, from the Mexican herdsman 
to the Japanese embassador, are hideous. One secret of the lim- 
ited success of Protestant missionaries in their labors, is their 
iusistance that the heathen man must learn English, wear pants, 
and change his name to John P. Smith. So Mexicans, having 
■discarded their historical dress in consequence of American asso- 
ciation, are not improved by the operation. 

The Mexican, meaning by that the farmer, herdsman, laborer 
or teamster, is frequently called a "Greaser," and is regarded by 
the Smart Aleck of nationalities, to wit, Mr. Yankee, as a low 
creature. Wishing to hear the counsel for the defense, if any 
existed, the present chronicler made bold to call on one of the 
Padres in Trinidad and ask him his opinion of his flock. It 
may be premised, however, that a pastor always stands up for 
his charge. When some years ago the Chinese question was 
"investigated" in San Francisco, a large number of red-nosed 
policemen swore that a Chinaman could not become a Christian ; 
but Rev. Mr. Gibson, who has preached to the Chinese for years, 
deposed, like a little man, that the Chinese made an excellent 
article of Presbyterians. It was to be expected that the Padre 
would say a good word, but his testimony was unexpectedly fa- 
vorable. He was an Italian, a short man with a comfortable 
waistband; a large nose, bestrode with spectacles, and spoke 
English in the velvety voice peculiar, I think, to priests, and 
helped his words with the shrug of the shoulders, possible only 
with Italians. 



MOUNTAINS AND MEXICANS. 37 

He said, iu substance, that newspaper correspondents had been 
altogether too rapid and situuitaueous in their judgment of the 
Mexican character. No people could be understood by a stranger, 
ignorant of their language — and the Mexican has been judged by 
such. He is not, as an American is, a man of business. Why 
should he be? Shut out from all the world, with no railroads, 
no markets, why should he raise what he cannot sell? But talk 
to the Mexican about his religion, and you will find that he is a 
theologian. He deserves credit for being what he is. Sur- 
rounded for centuries by Indians, he has preserved his civiliza- 
tion, his religion, and his language. His Spanish is not only 
correct ; it is elegant. He is a purist iu the matter of language. 
A man should be judged by his heart; and the Mexican is a good- 
hearted man. He is attached to his children, and he is the soul 
of hospitality. Touching the question of blood, and the state- 
ment often made that the Mexican is not a white man, but a 
mongrel Indian, the Padre entered a denial. The common Mexi- 
can is the descendant of the common Spaniard who came with 
Cortez He had a fashion of adopting Indian children, whom 
he raised and treated as his own. But these children were mar- 
ried, not to Mexicans, but to other Indians. Possibly illicit 
relations had grown up at times between the races. " For," said 
the Padre, with a deprecatory wave of the hand and the Medi- 
terranean shrug, "we are all but men." But in the matter of 
regular and legitimate descent, the Mexican is no Indian, nor 
hybrid Indian. Much more said the priest in the same direc 
tion, which I will not set down here, but add that later iu the 
day I met Rev. Mr. Darley, who, as a Presbyterian missiouar}', 
has visited, as he says, every Mexican family in Colorado, and 
who is a thorough Spanish scholar and edits a paper in that lan- 
guage. Mr. Darley confirmed much that his theological enemy 
had stated, especially in regard to the matter of language, though 
he differed in regard to the pedigree questiou. In short, he gave 
the swarthy adopted American a generally good character. 

I have given these opinions as new, to me at least, and reserve 
iny own till a later period. I may add that both clergymen gave 
3 



38 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

me information regarding that curious religious order among the 
Mexicans, the Penitentes, of which I may say more hereafter. 

In regard to adobe structures, which excite the curiosity of 
visitors, I have only to say that an adobe house is a mud house. 
The mud order of architecture varies, but it is always muddy. 
Many Americans in Trinidad have adopted the adobe, and by 
concealing the material with plaster, a very creditable structure 
is the result. The large Catholic church at Trinidad is built of 
roughly-made mud bricks, and looks like a great sod house. The 
adobe and the Mexican belong together. As the American comes 
in, brick and wood are beginning to be used ; in the newest towns 
are used altogether. The flat-roofed adobe house, looking like 
pictures one sees in the Bible dictionaries, will soon be remanded 
to the rural districts, and future newspaper correspondents will 
describe it no more. 

The burro is numerous in Trinidad. A procession of burros, 
each little ass with a load of wood on his back as large as him- 
self, is a grave spectacle. At this season of the year the burro 
is seen in families, and so the procession has its variety. First 
comes old Mrs. B. ; then a young burro, about as tall as a saw- 
horse; then another burro with a little Mexican on deck; then 
more burros, big and little ; while at the tail of the procession 
comes the owner of the caravan, a middle-aged Mexican. Thus 
all ages and both sexes may be represented, but no member of 
either family ever smiles. Still the burro, for all his humble 
and self-depreciatory expression, is universally well spoken of. 
He has many friends. At least the talk is eulogistic. His posi- 
tion is not unlike that of an editor in politics : he gets the 
complimentary notices, and in return carries all the wood in the 
shape of candidates that can be loaded on his long-suffering 
back. 

Thus I have mentioned the striking figures that attracted me 
as I approached the frontier of New Mexico. As for Trinidad, 
it is a typical mountain town, full of enterprise and hope, and 
with a big faith in coal mines and the cattle trade, of which it is 
the center. The town is not yet over its youthful and festive 
days. With many first-class business men and exemplary citi- 



MOUNTAINS AND MEXICANS. 39 

zens, there are many gentlemen whose lives are devoted to sinful 
games. Occasionally the festivities are summarily abbreviated. 
The last shooting, however, was several weeks ago. The de- 
parted was a "formerly of Kansas" man, and was known, from 
an obliquity of vision, as "Cock-Eyed Frank." One sound busi- 
ness rule, "Pay as you go," is rigidly enforced; at least I saw 
conspicuously posted, the following lines: 
".Jawbone don't go. 
Give me an ante." 

This is submitted for the benefit of the learned in such matters. 
While we are speaking of the wayward and erring, I will say 
for the benefit of those who believe in Bret Harte's stories, that 
I saw a reduced copy of Mr. John Oakhurst. He had just been 
propelled into the gutter by an imperious barkeeper. He did not 
wear Mr. Oakhurst's black suit, nor his varnished boots, but I 
noticed that as he rose from the earth he carefully dusted the few 
clothes he had on with his pocket handkerchief. It is pleasant 
to meet in real life those characters who have so charmed us in 
fiction. 

Quite a group of Kansas men were found in Trinidad, in the 
solid business circles. One of these was Thomas C. Stevens, 
once of Carney, Stevens & Co., of Leavenworth, Mr. Stevens's 
descriptions of gentlemen he formerly knew in Kansas, who com- 
bined patriotism and business, in the proportion of one part of 
the former to about 1,000 of the latter, while not marked by any 
special elegance of diction or rhetorical ornament, were models 
of clear, powerful, seafaring English. 

I had hoped to see Raton Pass by clear daylight, but the train 
passed under a cloudy sky at five o'clock in the morning. Pulled 
by two engines, the train of seven cars slowly climbed the ascent 
till near the summit the fog shut out the prospect. The tunnel 
passed, and the long down slope commenced, the fog lifted and 
the clouds began to break. The mountains on either side seemed 
to rise higher and to almost tear the drifting clouds, but erelong 
they parted as the waves of the Red Sea parted before marching 
Israel, and through an opening in the eastern hills a burst of 
sunshine lit up heaven and earth as we descended to the plains 
of New Mexico. 



THE NEW-MEXICAN REVOLUTION. 

The locomotive climbing the Raton Pass ( where once the 
hardy scout or hunter carefully and toilsomely picked his way 
on foot), surmounting with slow but ceaseless labor the grade of 
185 feet to the mile, never ceasing till the crest is reached and 
the pines on the summit quiver to the whistle's blast, and then 
feeling its way carefully down the slope to finally rush with a 
triumphant rattle and roar from the shadows of the mountain 
into the sunlight vastness of the plain, is a symbol of the slow- 
ness with which a new and intense civilization approached the 
confines of New Mexico, and the suddenness with which it finally 
invaded and overran that hitherto silent and voiceless empire. 

The locomotive has always seemed to me the perfection of 
modern mechanism. It embodies so much power with a grace 
that is all its own. It calls into play in its construction all that 
the hand and eye and brain of the mechanic has learned, and is 
perfectly adapted to its purposes. When it appears for the first 
time in a country it marks the departure of the old and the 
coming of the new, and not merely what is new, but what is 
newest. 

This thought has followed me ever since I entered New 
Mexico. The old order, surprised suddenly, has not had time to 
fly or to change, and stands mute in the presence of the new. 
There stands the sun-burned herdsman watching his flocks in the 
waste; here the Mexican woman, with her shawl over her head, 
looks shyly from the door of the adobe hut, just as she has 
looked for all time ; while the locomotive dashes by them and the 
telephone wire is strung over their heads to communicate with 
ranches forty miles in the interior. There has never been any- 
thing like it in the world before. 

When one sees this country he realizes that nothing but the 
railroad was powerful enough to affect it. The slow march of 
(40) 



THE NEW-MEXICAN REVOLUTION. 41 

settlements, sucli as the older Western States knew, would not 
have crossed New Mexico from one border to the other in a 
hundred years. The vastness of these tawny plains is beyond 
the reach of descriptive language; the loneliness of the buttes, 
each with its castle-like crest of rock, which rise afar against 
the sky ; the gaunt desolateness of the-raviues, torn by the floods 
from the mountains; the ruggedness'^of the passes, apparently 
sunken craters, the " volcano's blinded eye," seem to defy human 
invasion coming by the means which other empires have known. 
A solitary traveler is a mere dot on the surface, a mote between 
the earth and sky ; a caravan is like a piece of driftwood on 
the ocean. Between the great plain and the Western ocean, the 
goal of the traveler, runs a dark line of frowning mountains, 
continuous, like a prison wall, and behind them are seen the 
snowy crests of other mountains, as if to forbid further advance. 
It is as if the inexorable Spirit of the Waste brooded over all, 
and uttered to all who ventured here the command, " March on." 

Here is a country known to civilized man for three hundred 
years, that in that period never produced an invention, nor wrote 
or printed a book, nor had any commerce save that of wagon 
caravans; now in the space of two years filled with railroads, 
telegraphs, telephones, iron bridges and daily papers. 

From Raton to Las Vegas the traveler sees on one side a plain 
bounded by mountains; on the other a plain as boundless as the 
sea, sometimes broken by the buttes of which I have spoken, 
sometimes by a mass of jagged rock thrust up from the plain 
like a wave. As a rule, it is grass — tawny now, but green when 
the rains come in July and August. Here and there are scat- 
tered herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, numbering thousands 
in all, but seeming few on account of the vast expanse over which 
they range. They did not seem the long-horned wild cattle that 
we associate with the southern prairies, but more like the domes- 
tic cattle of the North. In fact, the very brutes have become 
subject to the influence of the new civilization. The short-horn 
has been introduced, and the old long-horned racer is disappear- 
ing. The whole cattle business is passing from the hands of 
individuals into those of corporations and associations. Rufus 



42 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

Hatch, of Wall street, was at Dodge City the other day, ou busi- 
ness connected with one of these corporations, the capital of 
which is furnished in the East. I think everything in this world 
will be run, eventually, by a president, secretary, treasurer and 
board of directors. 

I have spoken of the locomotive as a symbol of civilization, 
but there is another quite as expressive. It is the empty fruit 
and oyster can. These are now strewed all over New Mexico 
and the world. These evidences of departed concentrated pro- 
visions are everywhere now; in the wake of the Jeannette and 
the trail of African Stanley. A visitor to the interior of the 
pyramids finds the former receptacle of cove oysters, and if you 
take the wings of morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the 
earth you will light on a sardine box. When the would-be ex- 
plorer begins to recite, "This is the forest primeval," his pride is 
crushed by discovering the tomato can of a prior visitor. How 
perfectly New Mexico has been subjugated is shown by the 
amount of old tin strewed over the territory to tempt the appe- 
tite of her goats. 

Las Vegas was visited for a few moments, and then the train 
was taken for the Hot Springs and the Hotel de Montezuma. 
We saw, however, before leaving Las Vegas, a large party of 
Philadelphia excursionists who had just visited the Springs under 
the conductorship of Col. Edward Haren, of the Santa Fe emi- 
gration, excursion and recreation bureau. Two or three parties 
of New Englanders have been brought through the country, be- 
sides the Philadelphians. It seems to be the purpose to exhibit 
to the newly-enlightened New-Mexicans all the different varieties 
of their fellow-citizens of the United States. 

I have spoken of the dark range of mountains constantly 
rising on the traveler's path as he goes south. Breaking through 
these mountains is a brawling stream called Gallinas — (double 1 
sounded like y.) The little river has cut its way down to the 
base of the mountains through wooded defiles and frowning 
canons. Occasionally it runs through a little valley, seeming the 
bed of some former lake, and in one of these little circular val- 
leys, just where the river is to break through the last wall of rock 



THE NEW-MEXICAN REVOLUTION. 43 

aud debouch upon the plain, are the Las Vegas Hot Springs and 
the hotels, aud the group of cottages. 

The Springs have been known nobody knows how long. The 
Indians reverenced them, just as they did the Great Spirit Springs 
in Kansas. When the Mexican colonists of the Las Vegas grant 
came up from the South they knew their value and embraced 
them in the land they took in severalty. Thirty-three years ago, 
so Rev. Mr. Reed, who was then an army chaplain at Santa Fe, 
tells me, the army doctors were accustomed to send soldiers, the 
victims of their own vices, to the springs to be cured. The old- 
timers aforesaid knew no more about the chemical analysis of 
water than the writer of this, i. <?., nothing; they only knew that 
the water did good. When the Americans began to hunt up 
everything valuable, an adobe hotel was built at the springs, 
then the stone building, the Hot Springs House; and finally the 
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe people built the Montezuma Hotel, 
which I believe to be the finest frame hotel building in America. 
There are larger buildings at Saratoga, but none so elegantly 
finished. The existence of this fine building in a lonely valley, 
traversed a few years ago only by a few Mexicans and burros, 
is the most wonderful thing yet. Every stick in this great house, 
four stories high and three hundred feet long, was brought from 
the northern verge of the United States. All this mass of fur- 
niture, mirrors, carpets, pictures, silver ware, and other details, 
superior to anything I know in Kansas, was brought over the 
mountains. Gas, water, electric bells, pianos, billiard tables, bar 
fixtures, everything known to a modern and fashionable hotel, 
has been collected here. Everything is finished and ready for 
the guests; two hundred fine rooms await them. The bath 
houses have a capacity of five hundred baths per day. The Ar- 
kansas Hot Springs, known and used for the better part of a 
century, have no such conveniences. 

Desirous of seeing something of the surroundings, we took a 
pedestrian trip four miles up the Gallinas. This streams flows, 
cold and swift, from the snows of the Rocky Mountains. It is 
full of eddies and falls and whirls and dimples, and has, when 
running over the rock, the color of topaz. The mountains. 



44 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

closing in a short distance above the hotel, leave for three miles 
a passage for the stream nowhere one hundred feet wide, includ- 
ing the banks proper. Occasionally a jutting clift" drove us into 
or across the streana. A geologist would have gone quite wild. 
iSuch strata, so many colored, so twisted, overlapped and braided, 
I never saw before. Several times the stream was crossed by a 
stratum of curiously-streaked rock, with bands varying from pure 
white to red. The stripes were extremely delicate — sometimes, 
though clearly defined, not over a tenth of an inch wide. For 
want of a better name we called it " Ribbon Rock." On the 
slopes of the mountain I saw nearly every evergreen common to 
the United States, save the white pine and the hemlock. The 
firs were especially beautiful. 

After walking, sliding, climbing and scrambling for four miles 
the defile widened, and we came to a point where there were 
grassy slopes and a wood-cutter's camp. Here we took the trail, 
made by packers long ago, to return. The narrow trail led far 
up the mountain-side, rising at times above the growth of the 
pines. As we marched along, the sky became overcast with 
leaden clouds. Far below we could see the windings of the Galli- 
nas. The wind sprang up, and we heard the plaintive moaning 
of the pines, and a few flakes of snow began to fall. In that 
high solitude, and under that sky, and amid the snow, which we 
could see was falling heavily in the distant mountains, we both 
spoke, as if by a common impulse, of the little group in Bret 
Harte's most pathetic story, " The Outcasts of Poker Flat." Not 
doomed, however, to a fate like theirs, we pushed on, and were 
soon at our temporary home, the Montezuma. 

Here a pleasing and curious scene presented itself Mingled 
with the guests from all parts of the country, and visitors from 
Las Vegas, was a group of country Mexicans, such as live in the 
defiles of the Gallinas. The women mostly wore their black 
shawls over their heads, but there was one conspicuous by a bon- 
net. They looked wonderingly at the building, the palace they 
had seen rise before their eyes within the last few months. A 
man, with a few women, ventured up the first stairway and into 
the long hall, with its carpets and bright gas fixtures. The 



THE NEW-MEXICAN REVOLUTION. 45 

women stopped, but he veutiired alone some distance, and then 
called to the others to come on, as he saw no danger. At dinner- 
time they ventured into the dining-room. The men wore their 
hats in, but, when requested, removed them and placed them on 
the rack, seeing which the lady with the bonnet returned and 
removed her head-gear also. Their evident desire to conform 
to the usages of society, and their quiet demeanor, attracted uni- 
versal commendation. 

This hotel is to the people a teacher. It will instruct them. 
Its influence will some of these days be seen in a hundred now 
unknown comforts in every poor Mexican adobe within fifty 
miles. 

The hotels at the Springs have been evoked by the same great 
enterprise which has done so much for Kansas and New Mexico. 
To the invalid or the tourist, who needs change as a medicine 
for mind or body, or both, this resort is now open. I would ad- 
vise that the visit be made not earlier than the latter part of 
May or early in June. I would advise, also, that the first visit 
be made soon, while the great change which this letter has dis- 
cussed is going on. The weariness of this world is the uniformity 
to which it is being reduced. While there is something left as 
God made it, let us for a time enjoy it. It is here now; it will 
be gone to-morrow. 



FROM LAS VEGAS TO SANTA F£. 

Las Vegas is two towns. The Mexicans, pushing slowly to 
the northward, started a town in 1835, and with the railroad 
came the Americans and started another, and the two lie in long 
lines, parallel with each other, with a row of houses and a street- 
car line connecting them like the membrane which harnessed the 
Siamese twins. The American town has the railroad buildings 
for its nucleus, and is all American. The Mexican town is not 
entirely Mexican, and the plaza is a compromise. Iron-front 
brick buildings, such as small towns have in Kansas, surround 
it; but many of the names on the signs are Mexican. The most 
frequent name is Romero. I think Romero must be Mexican for 
Smith. 

New Las Vegas has its daily newspaper, the Optic, and the 
other Las Vegas the Gazette, but neither is published on what 
may be called Mexican territory. Old Las Vegas has the Jesuits' 
College and the great Catholic church, and the largest hotel, 
"The Plaza." The post oflSce is as near as possible made conve- 
nient to both towns. 

Las Vegas has a boom. It claims 7,000 people, and business 
lots have been sold for S3,000. It shares in the glories of the 
Hot Springs, from which it is only six miles distant. It is the end 
of a railroad division. It has all the elements of a Kansas town, 
when said town is "on the rise." 

Las Vegas is the first town of importance where a traveler 
coming south on the Santa Fe can see the Mexican idea of town- 
building. After he passes that point the novelty will wear off". 
In Las Vegas there is a district called "The Hill," which is 
almost exclusively Mexican. It is to them a favorable spot, be- 
ing utterly barren. The country Mexican seeks the water-side; 
the town Mexican the hills. The best soil for the cultivation of 
"adobes" is a coarse gravel mixed with sand, and strewn with 
(46) 



FROjM las VEGAS TO SANTA Yh:. 47 

judicious liberality with rocks the size of asixty-four-pouud shot. 
No vestige of anything green should grow anywhere near; no 
tree, no flower, no blade of grass. On this firm foundation the 
square, flat-roofed mud house is reared. It is all dry mud except 
the door, the window, and the posts which hold the roof and pro- 
ject beyond the eaves. It is necessary, too, that the mud should 
be ugly mud. In the composition of adobe bricks, the soil is 
generally dug up in front of the proposed establishment and 
mixed up with water — earth, gravel and all; consequently the 
sides of the house are ornamented with small rocks sticking in 
the wall. Out in front an oven made of mud is built. Every- 
thing is now complete except to carelessly scatter a few dogs 
around the outside, and insert some men, women and children, 
especially the latter, on the inside. Standing on a bleak, wind- 
swept hill-side one of these houses is a dismal sight. But the 
tendency of the people is toward gregariousness. On regular 
streets what seems a single house will extend the length of a 
block. In other cases, the houses are built around a court-yard. 
The original idea is to have a court-yard for every house, but 
where one party cannot afford so much house, several pool their 
adobes, and complete the square. 

Las Vegas has a new church, built by the Jesuits — a huge 
affair, very wide for its height, and built of dark-red sandstone. 
With its two square towers it is quite imposing. There is nearly 
always something picturesque to be seen about Catholic churches, 
and entering this church late in the afternoon I saw something 
new to me. In front of one of the altars, on which candles were 
burning, knelt some twenty Mexican women and several young 
children. An emaciated cur sniffed around, and distracted the 
attention of the little black-eyed boys. The devotions of the 
group were led by an old woman, who recited prayers in Span- 
ish in a high-pitched, nasal voice, and with the greatest possible 
velocity. Once she broke out and sang a few lines, in a high 
key which was almost a scream, and then resumed as before. 
The women kept their heads and faces and shoulders covered 
with their black shawls, and the scene was weird enough. At 
last the meeting broke up, with a sort of exhortation by the old 



48 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

female "class leader," to each of the departing worshippers. A 
"female prayer meeting" seemed to me a novelty in the Catho- 
lic church. 

Taking the way freight in the early morning, the journey was 
resumed. The long stretch of plains from Katon to Las Vegas 
had been continued to the point of monotony, and it was agreea- 
ble as well as unexpected to find that the road soon after leav- 
ing Las Vegas entered upon constantly varying mountain 
scenery. There was a change, too, in the air — a suspicion that 
we were going south. The mountains seemed less stern and for- 
bidding than they had before; the pine forest which covered the 
slopes took a warmer shade of green. We skirted what seemed 
to have once been a huge wall, shutting in the waters of an in- 
land sea. Here were capes, promontories, headlands, and long 
straight lines of abandoned shore, and down the slopes were 
lines marking the successive ebbs of the water as it sank. At 
the crest of the seemingly unending range rose a perpendicular 
wall of rock, such as is common in the Blue Ridge range in the 
South. In the distance rose a snowy range, now in plain sight, 
now disappearing, as the train wound on its devious way. The 
engineering difficulties of the route were enormous, but were 
overcome by the sharp curves, sometimes defining the shape of 
the letter S, and the bold grades, once deemed impossible, but 
now surmounted with apparent ease by the enormous engines 
which modern locomotive builders have constructed. 

It is probable that every defile and mountain has its story, but 
in a country which, until recently, had few "abstract and brief 
chroniclers of the time," these are only preserved by oral tradi- 
tion. One mountain has, however, a melancholy celebrity. A 
party of Mexicans were once driven to its summit by Indians, 
and there surrounded till they perished of starvation and thirst. 
Through the clear air two crosses can be seen, erected to mark 
the spot where they met their fate. There, on the wind-swept 
height, in the atmosphere where nothing. decays, those crosses 
will stand to tell their story of suffering and cruelty, to thou- 
sands on thousands of passers-by. It made one's heart ache to 
think that while those poor men were dying of thirst they could 



FROM I.AS VEGAS TO SANTA FK. 49 

see below them the windings of a stream of cold, clear water, 
which irrigated, perhaps, their own little fields. It seemed as if 
we would never get away from the doleful mountain. At times 
I thought we had escaped it, in the windings of the road, but 
another turn brought it in sight again, with its crosses, eighteen 
hundred years ago and still the sign of voiceless agony. 

kSeveral Mexican villages were passed, sleeping in the sun, one 
with a little church, a mere hut; another, San Miguel, with a 
large church with two towers. There is a singular absence of 
life or stir about these places. One could easily believe them 
uninhabited. The men were at work plowing in the fields; the 
women keep indoors, and passing by one may often see them sit- 
ting on the floor in a circle, like Turkish women, conversing on 
such subjects as may enter their Mexican minds. 

All the road was interesting. The traveler who goes no farther 
into the country than Las Vegas will lose much. The scenery 
below is varied, and has the charm of novelty. Whatever form 
these mountains take, they are unlike any others. 

One objective point on the road was the old Pecos church, the 
subject of a thousand legends. For myself I am no antiquarian, 
and have no special theory in regard to the past of New Mexico. 
The curious in such matters are referred to the essays by Major 
Inman and others. I only tell what I saw, with a view to give 
an idea of things present, for the benefit of future tourists. 

Nothing in this country looks as I anticipated. I had formed 
the impression that the ruined Pecos church rose bare and gaunt 
from the midst of a level plain, but I caught ray first sight of it 
through the vistas of a pine forest, and far below the level of the 
track. It looked, in the distance, like the shell of a burned 
brick kiln. 

We got out at Levy, a station consisting of the little depot and 
the agent's cabin, surrounded by tall pines which gave forth a 
balsamic odor. A red road, over which the teamsters haul cedar 
posts and countless railroad ties from the forest-covered moun- 
tains, ran down into the valley. We followed it, and soon came 
into old fields covered with scattered dwarf cedars. The fields 
looked like the old fields of the South. One would have .said, 



50 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

seeing them in the South, that cotton had grown upon them 
within a few years. We kept on, crossing two or three deep 
ravines, cut in the red soil; then toiled through the dried, sandy- 
bed of an extinct river, a hundred yards wide, and saw before us 
the former site of the Pueblo of the Pecos. 

Imagine a great spoon lying convex side up, and you have the 
ground plan. A long sandstone ridge, perhaps seventy-five feet 
above the general level of the plain and the dead river, forms 
the handle. The ridge is in places not over 100 feet wide on 
top, and is a bare, sun-bleached rock. Along its sides great 
masses of stone have broken off and fallen down. The bowl of 
the spoon forms a plateau of a few acres, and on it stand the 
ruins of the town and the church, the ruins beginning where the 
handle joins the bowl. Great masses of small stones and earth 
are piled up, and from the heaps project timbers. The houses 
were two and perhaps more stories high, and built around court- 
yards, as in the present day. The outlines are distinctly visible. 
Here and there are circular depressions where the grass shows 
green. These are said by some to have been wells or cisterns; 
by others, council houses. 

At the end of the village where the bowl (turned over) is the 
highest stand the ruins of the church, its roofless adobe walls 
rising in places to the height of thirty feet. It is, or was, a Catholic 
church of the most approved order. Its interior is cruciform. 
Here is the chancel, here tlie nave, here the altar recess, here the 
entrance from the sacristy. The joists projecting from the wall 
show rude carving. Where was the altar is a pile of earth. 
We saw an excavation, and near by a fragment of a human 
skull. Some curiosity seekers had dug from under the ruined 
altar the bones of the priest who had once officiated there, and 
fragments of his Franciscan robe 

This was the ruin; how long since the swarms of Indian work- 
men raised its walls is not and may never be exactly known. 
The town was an old one when the Spanish came in 1536. It is 
one of the places connected by Indian tradition with the story 
of Montezuma. Abbe Domenec's story being taken for true that 
the Spaniards had possession of numerous Indian villages in 



FROM LAS VEGAS TO SANTA Fl^]. 51 

1542, this church may have been built then. It must be over 
two hundred years old. It has been an absolute ruin for more 
than fifty. Its preservation in its present shape is another proof 
that there is nothing so indestructible as simple earth. Masonry 
might have fallen; the natural rock all around has crumbled; 
but these earthen walls, five feet thick, unless destroyed inten- 
tionally by man may rear their sunburnt front in the lone valley 
of the Pecos for a thousand years to come. 

Where man comes and goes away he leaves a solitude more 
desolate than he found. Around the valley rose the mountains 
to the sky. To the northward the high peaks were wrapped iu 
clouds, and although the sun of May was shining, the snow could 
be seen falling on those cold and distant heights. Sweeping 
around almost in a semi-circle was the great mountain wall I 
have before mentioned, closing in on the east and south; to the 
west rose gentle slopes, dark with the forest. It was a lovely yet 
lonely spot. The vagrant wind waved the long grass that grew 
from the ruins; a great cactus spread its skeleton fingers; a sol- 
itary crow, balancing on uneven wing, endeavored to beat up 
against the wind. 

Here was solitude. The Indian, the Spaniard, and thousands 
of later visitors had been here and left their names and gone. 
Upon the mountain-side could be seen a little white cloud of 
moving vapor from a locomotive, but with a hurried echo linger- 
ing behind it, this latest invader came and went. And yet where 
we sat and watched the hurrying clouds cast their vanishing 
shadows upon the mountainside and plain, hundreds and thou- 
sands of human beings had been born and lived, laughed and wept, 
and hoped and loved, and despaired and died. Feeling secure, 
doubtless, on their ridge in the midst of the valley, the Indians 
had cultivated their fields, perhaps thousands of acres, along the 
banks of the Pecos half a mile away, and, as I believe, along the 
shores of the stream now dried up which ran beneath their walls. 
From their town they went forth in the morning; to it they 
returned at eve. According to tradition, so industrious were 
they that they collected provision for two or three years in ad- 
vance. They had chosen a noble site; these mountains seemed 



52 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

a shelter for them — a barrier against their foes. They proved 
neither. The new god, whose temple they reared, in time seemed 
as powerless as the old. The fields are now wastes ; the town is 
a heap of stones and earth; and the roofless church is a monu- 
ment of desolation. Thousands pass it by, but none remain. 
The strongest and the wisest must possess the earth. Coronado 
passed by the spot in 1542, on his long and fruitless march. 
What a savage wilderness lay between him and the sounding 
Atlantic ! Seventy-eight years after, a band of shivering Eng- 
lish emigrants stood under the bleak December sky and con- 
fronted Frenchman and Spaniard and Indian. From that hour 
the idea of a great American-European Catholic Empire in 
America was made impossible. To-day this ruined church is au 
emblem and evidence of that lost dream. This railroad, built 
by the lineal descendants of those very Puritan exiles, is the 
sign and symbol of the future. The Spaniard brought ruin; 
the descendants of the Englishman of the Seventeenth century 
will bring restoration. The Indians cannot come back; the fire 
of Montezuma which they are said to have kept burning amid 
the ruins of Pecos has gone out forever; but as we passed we 
saw that the Mexican farmer had discarded the wooden plow, 
and was turning over the soil with the bright share of the Amer- 
ican. The mines opened by the Spaniards were filled up, but 
a few hundred yards from the little station of Levy, Americans 
were sinking a shaft, not for gold or silver this time, but for use- 
ful copper. All that was good will come back, increased an 
hundred fold. 

It is very difficult, I may say, to gain accurate information in 
regard to distances, etc., in this country. The Mexican does not 
understand you; the American, in many instances, does not know 
or does not care. We had been given the distance of the ruin 
from the station by half a dozen persons, as varying from half a 
mile to three miles. A note of our expedition may help future 
visitors. 

We left Las Vegas on the way freight at about nine o'clock; 
we arrived at Levy at half past one; we visited the ruin and re- 
turned to the station in time for the passenger train bound south, 



FROM LAS VEGAS TO SANTA FE. 53 

at half-past four. The distance to the church may be safely- 
called cue mile and a half 

The road presents no difficulties that a good walker, lady or 
gentleman, cannot surmount. We took dinner with the train- 
men at Fulton. Visitors can supply themselves with lunch at 
Las Vegas. No traveler from the North should fail to visit the 
church. The history of this old country must be gathered in 
chapters; by degrees, as it were, and this old ruin is a strange 
leaf in the book of time. 

The afternoon sun was declining when the passenger train came 
along, and we resumed our journey. We passed Glorieta, and 
the wild walls of the Apache canon, and, changing cars at Lamy 
Junction, turned again to the northward. In the slant sun to the 
westward we saw new mountains; true mountains in their out- 
line, in color and form, such as we see in great pictures, and in 
dreams, "the purple peaks, that tear the drifting clouds of gold." 
They rose from the plains, a group by themselves, beautiful and 
alone. Looking at them, we forgot all else, and started with 
surprise when the brakeman called "Santa Fe!" 



HOURS IN SANTA F£. 

With the exception of Savannah, with its shady streets of greeu 
and gloom, its old houses with iron-barred lower windows; its 
Spanish and Huguenot names, I have never seen an American 
city which so impressed and won me as Santa Fe. Between the 
two cities there is scarcely a point of resemblance. One is al- 
most on a level with the sea, the other is 7,000 feet above it; 
one is surrounded by low pine woods and rice swamps and reedy 
marshes, the other looks from the lap of mountains which rise 
to the realms of sterility and snow. In fact they have nothing 
in common, save that both remind one of Spain, and both are 
very old. 

In traveling usually one soonwearies of a place and longs to 
hurry on to another, but I find myself lingering here and reluc- 
tant to go. .1 discover that I am more than usually reluctant to 
do anything "on time," and disposed to lounge around the plaza 
or walk about the narrow streets and talk to the Kansas fellows 
who live here, and who seem coming into town as if to a meeting 
of the Republican Central Committee or State Convention. The 
first evening of my arrival, I met Prof George F. Gaumer, whom 
I had known as a student in the University at Lawrence, who 
has since traveled all over Cuba and Yucatan as a naturalist, 
and is now living here with his pretty Kansas wife, teaching 
Spanish, (how is that for Kansas?) and acting as professor in 
the University of New Mexico. Then there is Ed. L. Bartlett, 
formerly of Wyandotte, and Mrs. Bartlett, the society of either, 
to say nothing of both, being sufficient to induce a Kansas man 
to stay in Santa Fe a year ; and last, but not least by any means, 
is my rotund old friend, of all my years in Kansas, Father Def- 
ouri, now the Padre of the Church of Our Lady of Guadaloupe, 
an edifice which he is overhauling in a manner calculated to 
astonish the bones of the ancient Mexicans buried under and 
(54) 



HOURS IN SANTA FE. 55 

around it. Going along the plaza I met, day before yesterday, 
Gov. Harvey, "bearded like the pard," just in from his survey- 
ing labors. The first morning of my stay Dr. Seibor, formerly 
of Ellsworth, drove up, and yesterday I rode out with him to 
the Indian village of Tesuque. 

In Kansas by this time it must be warming up, but here there 
is the sun of May with a darker blue in the cloudless sky than 
I have noticed elsewhere, and yet there is snow on the mountains 
and a touch of early winter or late fall in the air. They say it 
never goes above 85° in the summer. The cottonwoods and the 
alfalfa in the little plaza are bright and green, but the irrigated 
gardens, shut in by breast-high adobe walls, are hardly begin- 
ning to show color. And, speaking of the plaza, brings me 
back to Kansas or Kansans again. The soldiers' monument in 
the center of the plaza, which commemorates the valor of the 
heroes of New Mexico who fought Indians and those whom the 
monument in uncompromising language on unyielding marble 
calls "rebels," was erected at the instance of Gen. Bob Mitchell, 
of Kansas, who, poor fellow, passed the other day, amid the 
shadows of poverty, to his grave. In front of a store facing the 
plaza, Richard Weightman, once a familiar figure in Atchison, 
stabbed and killed, in self-defense, Felix Aubrey, the famous 
rider ; and in the Exchange Hotel, at a corner of the plaza, Col. 
John P. Slough was murdered. Both Weightman and Slough 
are very kindly spoken of here by men who knew them inti- 
mately. In the old "Palace" on the plaza, W. F. M. Arny 
served five years as Secretary of the Territory, and Capt. John 
Pratt a still longer time as United States Marshal. A Kansas 
man ought to feel at home here. 

To get down to a semblance of business, Santa Fe is a town 
of nine thousand inhabitants, of whom two-thirds are natives. 
It claims to be the oldest town in the United States, but nothing 
can be told of its age by its appearance. An adobe house takes 
"no note of time." It looks as old in a week as it will after 
ten thousand years of existence. For all one can see, Santa Fe 
may have been built ten years ago, or Adam may have irrigated 
the Garden of Eden from the little Rio Santa Fe. There is no 



56 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

mistake, however, about its being very old. Mr. Ellison, the 
old Acting Territorial Librarian, "has the papers" on that. 
There was, from the dawn of time, an Indian village here, and 
"the Santa Fe Town Company," as I presume it was called, 
began operations in 1597. Archbishop Lamy, who has known 
the town since 1850, says it changes very little in its general ap- 
pearance. It was a town of five thousand inhabitants at the time 
of the American occupation, and what has been done since, until 
the railroad came, has been done on the old plan. The United 
States Government in its buildings adopted the adobe, and 
Americans generally did the same. Even now, in the construc- 
tion of brick residences, the old one-story, roomy house, with its 
placita, or court, is followed as a model. The Exchange Hotel, 
where this letter is written, is one of the large hotels of the 
town, and it is but an extension of an old Mexican house, a one- 
story adobe, with two little court-yards, into which the sun 
shines without let or hindrance; a rambling, irregular, curious 
old place, with big bed-rooms, each with a back door and a front, 
opening into the placita and the street, and no ceiling overhead — 
just the bare joists. A queer and comfortable place, better a 
thousand times, to my taste at least, than a box and bell-cord in 
the sixth story of an American hotel. 

The town is an aggregate of such houses, and smaller ones, 
with some modern brick and frame houses already built, and 
others coming. The first royal Governor, the Hon. Pedro de Pe- 
ralta, appears to have said in first arranging the town, "Here we 
will have a little square plaza, and on this side of it the Gover- 
nor's palace shall be built, and around it we will have business 
houses; and for the rest, you can build where you like, only do 
not take up too much room with your streets." Then the inhab- 
itants went to work, with a spider web for a model, and located 
streets and alleys, and built long lines of adobe houses on each 
side, with originally no windows on the street side, and with but 
a large gate opening from the street into the placita. On the 
street front they erected porches running from house to house, 
for hundreds of feet, so that in Santa Fe you may walk long 
distances without stepping into the sun, or the rain — when it 



HOURS TX SANTA FE. 57 

falls. The Rio Santa Ft', a little stream from the mountains, 
runs through a wide rocky bed in the midst of the town, separat- 
ing it into two portions; and on this stream the women of both 
towns met and discussed the hired-girl question, and washed their 
clothes. 

This is a rough outline of what appears to be the general plan 
of Santa Fe. Going up on the hill which overlooks the town, 
you may, from the earthwork called Fort Marcy, see all over 
Santa Fe as it is now, and in your mind you can reconstruct it 
as it was. You see large squares which look likedried-up ponds: 
they are the flat roofs of the adobe houses. This flat surface was 
originally broken only by occasional trees and the higher walls 
of the churches. 

The Spaniards, on their occupation of a country, build at 
once a fort and a church. Santa Fe has, consequently, some 
very old churches which are the flrst objects of interest visited 
by strangers. The oldest of these is San Miguel, St. Michael 
being greatly venerated in these parts. The original church was 
built, no one knows exactly when, but it is said in 1640. The 
Pueblo Indians destroyed it in the revolt of 1680, and it was re- 
built in 1710. On a beam under the gallery it is stated that it 
was built by the Marquis de Penuela. His whole name was 
"The Admiral Don Jose Chacon Medina Salazar Villasenor, 
Knight of the Order of Santiago, Governor and Captain General 
of this Kingdom of New Mexico; " but he did not sign his name 
in full because there was not room enough on the beam. San 
Miguel on the outside looks like an immense and badly con- 
structed sodhouse. The inside is long, narrow and high, with a 
little gallery supported by a cross-beam and the great name of 
the Marquis de Penuela. There are a number of pictures, age 
unknown — perhaps painted in Spain, perhaps in old Mexico. 
They are very ugly, as is San Miguel itself What is true of San 
Miguel is true of San Francisco. This church is at present cu- 
riously situated. The great stone church, which has been four- 
teen years in building, completely incloses it, and shuts out the 
sun in a great degree, causing some of the strangest efiects of 
light and shadow imaginable. Through the open doors comes a 



58 SOUTHAVESTERN LETTERS. 

bit of bright sunshine; daylight from some source falls on the 
high altar; between them is dim shadow, made more strange and 
ghastly by the Mexican women, closely covered by their black 
shawls, who kneel in silence before a little altar in an alcove. 

The most interesting church to me was that of Our Lady of 
Guadaloupe. This church has been turned over to the Rev. 
James H. Defouri, formerly of Kansas, for the use of the English" 
speaking Catholics of Santa Fe. It is probably nearly as old as 
San Francisco; but what a change, my countrymen! Father 
Defouri found the church, like all old churches, without seats or 
a fire. He has introduced pews and a stove. I understand that 
the latter was considered a frightful innovation, the faithful hav- 
ing relied for ages on their piety to keep them warm, but the 
pews were a distinguished success. On the first Sunday they 
were opened to the public they were filled with natives, delighted 
to worship in comfort. A Kansas man may be considered the 
reformer of New-Mexican church interiors. Many tourists will 
doubtless feel shocked by the lack of reverence for the antique 
shown in putting a new roof on this church; it may be a comfort 
to such to know that on the other hand to Father Defouri is due 
the preservation of the remarkable altar-piece, perhaps the finest 
specimen of Spanish-American art in New Mexico. It was 
painted in Mexico by Josephus Alzibar, in 1683, and on account 
of its size was brought to Santa Fe in three pieces. It portrays 
in four tableaux the old Mexican legend of Juan, the Pueblo, to 
whom the Virgin appeared thrice, and left as a proof of the 
reality of her visit her full-length portrait on his mantle. Show- 
ing this to the Bishop, who had been before incredulous, a church 
of Our Lady of Guadaloupe was erected on the spot designated 
by her in her first meeting with the Indian. The three figures at 
the top of the picture, representing the Trinity, are beautifully 
drawn; and the whole design is spirited. This picture was being 
destroyed by leaking rain, and its base was nearly hidden by a 
pile of dirt. It has now been inclosed in a frame, and is to be 
more perfectly restored. Kansas people will not fail to visit the 
Guadaloupe church, to see the painting and listen to the expla- 
nation by their former fellow-citizen. In the sacristy was pru- 



HOURS IN SANTA Fjfi. 59 

dently concealed a hideous picture taken from the church, and 
the worthy Father was kind enough not to dispute the writer's 
expressed belief that the artist is now in purgatory. 

There are other churches, but those mentioned are the most 
interesting. 

In another letter, other points of interest will be mentioned. 
This letter is addressed confidentially to Kansans at home, to tell 
them the "lay of the land." They should visit Santa Fe, if 
they propose to do so, at once. They will find friends here in the 
shape of former acquaintances, and will make more after they 
get here. In particular, they will meet a pleasant welcome from 
Governor Sheldon, to whom the writer is indebted for many 
courtesies. They will find now many things which a few years 
later will have disappeared. It is but forty-eight hours' ride 
from Atchison to Santa Fe, and in that distance you seem to have 
passed from one world to another. Leaving things modern and 
familiar, you can be surrounded here by strange faces, strange 
houses, strange churches, and all around a frame of mountains 
as charming as the Delectable Mountains which rose before the 
delighted vision of Bunyan's Pilgrim. And so, "more anon." 



SOMETHING MORE ABOUT SANTA FE. 

Santa Fe is the historical center of New Mexico, and its civil, 
ecclesiastical aud military capital. The seat of the first is, as it 
has been for two hundred years continuously, the long adobe 
building which forms one side of the plaza, and which is the 
only building in the United States called, of right, a "palace." 
Gov. Lionel A. Sheldon sits literally in the place of the royal 
governors, and the Mexican Republican Governors and political 
chiefs who have ruled in all sorts of fashions this queer old 
country. He wears the mantle of the brave Otermin, the lofty 
Marquis de Penuela, he of the many titles; of the unfortunate 
Perez, of Margales, last of the Spanish rulers, and so on down. 
The palace is a long, low, shadowy building, with a wide porch, 
and if all the varied characters who for two centuries or more 
have walked under that porch and have entered those deep-set 
doors, could at one time "revisit the glimpses of the moon" for 
the benefit of the present incumbent, he could a tale unfold more 
wonderful than Hamlet, or Macbeth, or the guilty Richard. 
Proud Grandee of Spain, from the streets of Seville or the banks 
of the Guadalquiver; long-robed Franciscan; fierce and wily In- 
dian; aspiring Mexican chieftain; American soldier; Kit Carson, 
and all the famous men of the plain and mountain, have walked 
under the ^or^a^ of the old palace. In one room, piled in dusty 
heaps, breast high, are papers and parchments which may yet 
prove a mine more precious than gold to the patient historian. 
Beginning with the story of the re-conquest of the country, by 
Diego del Vargas, written in 1693, these papers cover all of life 
in New Mexico until the day when a new and strange flag waved 
above the Palace, and Governors speaking a new language 
reigned within its walls. Somewhere in these heaps is a paper of 
great interest to the writer. It is a detailed statement of the 
expenses incurred in the arrest and detention of Captain Zebulon 
(60) 



SOMETHING iMORE ABOUT SANTA FE. 61 

M. Pike, a hero whose uame and fame there is an humble effort 
to preserve in the sketch, "Pike, of Pike's Peak." The custo- 
dian of the archives is Mr. Ellison, the Territorial Librarian, 
who looks nearly as old as his charge. 

While no adequate appropriation has ever been made to have 
the papers arranged, classified and preserved, Mr. Ellison has 
regarded their care as a labor of love. During dght mouths 
that he was a sufferer from a broken limb, he solaced with these 
old documents the weary hours. He showed me some of the 
oldest records. They are on fine Italian paper, the writing 
covering only the right half of the page, leaving room for re- 
marks and annotations. The handwriting is clear and the ink 
scarcely faded. Those old Spaniards did some things very well. 
It is noticeable that the older the records the more care is dis- 
played in their preparation. 

A thoughtful person seeing these papers longs to penetrate the 
mysteries of the early history of New Mexico, but really very 
little has been drawn from this source. Judge Rich, who is to 
New Mexico what Judge Frank Adams is to Kansas, has col- 
lected many books on the history of Mexico and New Mexico, 
but there is nothing which can be called a history of the latter. 
Of the modern books, " El Gringo," by a Pennsylvanian named 
Davis, who was Attorney General of the Territory twenty-five 
years ago, is as good as any. Davis appears to have been a one- 
horse politician, entirely destitute of imagination, quite com- 
monplace, and troubled with a clumsy and elephantine humor ; 
but his story is a straight one, and has the merit of brevity. 

The history of New Mexico will be found an uneventful one. 
From the days of the Spanish conquest but two serious revolu- 
tions have occurred, that of 1680, when the Spaniards were 
driven out by the Indians, and that of 1837, when Gov. Perez 
was murdered. The Indians had been nominally Christianized 
in 1837, and yet behaved with more ferocity than in 1680. An 
attempt at insurrection against the United States, shortly after 
the occupation by the Americans, was easily suppressed by Col. 
Price, afterwards Gen. Sterling Price, of the Confederate army. 

The truth is, New Mexico was until recently a faraway coun- 



62 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

try. Shut in by mountains or immense plains, it was a land 
apart. The Mexican revolution, which for ten years preceding 
1820 deluged Old Mexico with blood, was scarcely heard of in 
New Mexico, and the country submitted to the Americans with 
hardly a show of resistance. Whether it was Spanish Governor 
General, Mexican political chief, or American Governor ap- 
pointed at Washington, Santa Fe has always been the capital, 
and all the varying forms of sovereignty have been accepted 
with about equal resignation. The vigorous and arbitrary rule 
of the Spanish is, however, best remembered, and occasionally 
Gov. Sheldon is appealed to by some simple Mexican in a way 
that indicates belief in his absolute power to do what he likes — 
a lingering relic of the effect of old-time rule. 

Santa Fe is the capital of a province not limited by the 
boundaries of New Mexico, but embracing Colorado and a vast 
stretch of mountain country, and the head of that great spirit- 
ual empire is the Archbishop of Santa Fe. His face is recog- 
nized and his authority exercised over a larger region, probably, 
than owns the sway of any other Archbishop in the Catholic 
church ; and in town or country, in civilized city or Indian 
pueblo, from Oregon to the boundary of Mexico, all along the 
backbone of the continent, the best-known name is that of the 
Rt. Rev. John B. Lamy. Civil Governors come and go, but 
this tall, slender, elderly Franco-American remains with un- 
changing and unbroken power. Under his rule and through 
his energy Santa Fe is becoming one of the great seats of 
Catholic education and influence, with a cathedral, a hospital 
and schools, all projected on a scale which may be termed vast, 
and which will preserve his name for unknown time to come. 

The Bishop's Garden is one of the sights of Santa Fe. Com- 
ing early into possession of a plat of ground containing a spring 
sufficient to irrigate the whole city of Santa Fe, he has created 
such a spot of greenery as must surprise the barren mountain- 
peaks which look down upon it. Within that high adobe wall 
grows every fruit tree which will exist in the climate and alti- 
tude, and although the Archbishop has passed nearly all his life 
in this country, there is a reminiscence of France in the formal 



SOMETHING MORE ABOUT SANTA f6. 63 

little garden which is distinctively his own, with its pears and 
grapes trained against the wall, as you see them in Normandy. 
It was in this little garden, walking to and fro with his breviary 
in his hand, that the writer saw the famous Archbishop of the 
Mountains for the first, possibly for the last, time. The Arch- 
bishop's house is built after the Mexican fashion, its placita 
opening directly on the street. In the center of the neat little 
court was found a fountain, and two beautiful little children, 
with a Mexican nurse girl, were playing about, for the apart- 
ments, except a few occupied by the Archbishop, are rented. 
The doors and the regular entrance to the garden were found 
closed, but one of the little girls went toddling and prattling 
about, insisting that she knew the road, and so by a circuitous 
and forbidden path we entered the grounds. We loitered about, 
admiring the ponds with their myriads of fish, the paths, the 
white-blossomed strawberries, and every detail of the little Eden, 
when we suddenly came face to face with the owner of the grounds, 
who had evidently thought that he had securely shut out the 
world. The situation into which our little volunteer guide had 
led us was, for a moment, embarrassing, but the Archbishop 
soon recovered from his surprise, and treated us with his 
accustomed politeness; and his tall figure, his fine e3'^es and com- 
manding features seemed appropriately framed in the bright sur- 
roundings. He showed us his parlor, with a fine carved marble 
mantel made by a native New-Mexican, and pictures and em- 
broideries, the work of pupils in his schools. He explained that 
once he lived for months in Santa Fe without seeing a for- 
eign visitor, but now, with the advent of the railroad, hundreds 
of excursionists visited the grounds, and, he intimated, tres- 
passed somewhat on his time and patience. Going out into the 
court, we found the little author of our troubles in company 
with her younger sister, radiant with triumph over her achieve- 
ment in showing us the grounds. She was caught up and 
soundly kissed for her wickedness. 

Santa Fe is, beside its civil and ecclesiastical supremacy, the 
military headquarters of the district, as it was in the old Spanish 
time. The Government has reserved several squares which are 



64 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

inclosed iu high walls and covered with one-story adobe bar- 
racks, and the neat residences of the officers. The garrison band 
usually plays in the little shaded plaza three times a week, and 
is one of the attractions of the town. At the time of our visit 
the troops had gone in search of Indians, and the parade and 
barracks seemed quite forlorn. 

There was a town before Santa Fe was founded, and no one 
may know how old it was, and there still exists, six miles from 
Santa Fc, the pueblo of Tesuque, in form and construction ex- 
actly the same as it was in the days of Cortez. I rode out to it 
in company with Dr. Seibor, formerly of Ellsworth, who had 
never visited it before, and consequently our inspection was not 
as thorough and intelligent as it might have been, though very 
pleasant. The road runs over a high ridge, and for much of the 
distance iu the bed of a long, dried-up river. The scene was 
thoroughly New-Mexican. The sun-burnt road, the thousands 
of yellovv, sun-blistered and serried ridges, covered with a thin 
growth of cedars and pinon, and the groups of burros loaded 
with wood, and driven by Indians; and occasionally a party of 
American prospectors mounted on gaunt horses, with their bur- 
ros with sacks of flour and other necessaries, marching on before. 
All these men carried arms and looked serious. I think the 
solemn mountains and the purple sky have a tendency to make 
people quiet and sedate, even without an uncertain tenure to 
one's scalp being added. Indians were seen plowing iu the fields 
by the roadside. They used a plow made of three sticks — a big 
long one for the beam, a sharp oue for the share, and a crooked 
one for the handle. The plows ricochetted along at the heels of 
diminutive black-and-white oxen. The Indian costume is very 
simple: it consists of hair, shirt and leggins. The Pueblo Indian 
is the inventor of that capillary mutilation known as the "bang." 
His heavy black hair hangs over his forehead, and is cut square 
across even with his eyebrows. It is very sweet. In childhood 
the hair is cut close to the head, with the exception of a fringe 
round the lower border, which curls up like a duck's tail. This 
adds a great charm to Pueblo infancy. 

A pueblo is a big mud house built around a court. In con- 



SOMETHING MORE ABOUT SANTA FE. 65 

structiou it reverses the principle of a block-house. The upper 
story, instead of projecting, is withdrawn. The householder 
ascends to the top of a lower story by a ladder, and enters 
"up-stairs" by a door. If there were no ladder he could shin 
up the lightning rod. A door on the ground floor would hurt 
the feelings of the late Montezuma. We entered several apart- 
ments, including that of the Governor, who has a T-shaped 
opening in the front of his house through which he can look 
out and see everything. He was looking when we met him, 
assisted by his wife and child. All three just sat and looked. 
When spoken to they made no reply, but just looked. In the 
course of a year they must see a great deal. Occasionally a 
woman or child came out on the upper deck, like a prairie dog, 
and took a look. Others were at work cutting wood. In an 
apartment we saw a girl, whose costume consisted of two yards 
of half-width calico arranged in festoons, grinding meal. A slab 
of hard rock is fastened at an incline in a trough, and the corn 
is rubbed on this with a stone rolling-pin. The little soft black- 
and-white corn is worn up very rapidly. The rooms were swept 
very clean, but pervaded with a peculiar and pungent odor. 
The Pueblos are ugly, sullen, personally dirty, and very indus- 
trious. They are nominally Catholics, but are said to be in fact 
heathen, who believe in the second coming of Montezuma. 
They seemed to be looking for him when I saw them. The 
Tesuque Indians are said to be poorer and less aristocratic than 
those of other Pueblos. In the matter of ugliness they cannot 
be excelled by any Indians I have seen except our own lost 
Kaws. Some Apaches who came into Santa Fe on horseback 
looked like noblemen beside the citizens of Tesuque. 

I tried, from the conversation of old residents, to reconstruct 
the old-time Santa Fe, but in vain. Contrary to my pre- 
vious belief, I found Santa Fe during the days of the old over- 
land trade was a quiet town. The traders parked their wagons 
on the plaza, and camped themselves on a piece of ground known 
as the "United States." Each wagon paid a license of S500. 
The principal occupation was gambling, and the most famous 
gambler in Santa Fe was a native woman, Gertrudes Barcelone, 



66 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

who died rich and was burled with all the honors of the church. 
The native people have changed their costume and habits by 
almost imperceptible degrees, but enough remains to interest the 
traveler. There is an old curiosity shop on San Francisco street 
which will tell you more in half an hour than I can in many 
letters. The sulky clerk will say nothing to you if you do not 
speak to him, and you will be at liberty to examine the collec- 
tion at your leisure. Such old swords, such daggers, such books 
from mouldy convents, such costumes, Spanish, Mexican and In- 
dian, you will not find elsewhere. In that odd place you can 
weave your dreams into a continuous web from Cabeza de Vaca 
to Governor Sheldon. If you would further call up the spirits 
of the past, go, if you are a man and not too scrupulous, into a 
saloon or dancing-hall, and ask the Mexican guitarist and his 
Italian companions with their violins to play for you " La Fresca 
Rosa," or the fine air of "Cinco de Mayo." In hearing it you 
will perceive and almost feel for yourself that uncaring and idle 
spirit which has enabled these New-Mexicans to live on, unresist- 
ing and content, alike under oppression and freedom, amid the 
gathering dust of eventless centuries or the noise and stir of 
these last progressive years. The tinkle and the tang of the 
guitar, a fresh cigarette, the invariable " quien sabe" to every 
troublesome question, are enough, and the crazy world may go 
on with all its busy madness for all that Jose or Jesus Maria 
cares. You know all this when you hear the music, and you 
momentarily adopt the sentiment as your own. 

There are a few towns it is a pleasure or a necessity to forget. 
You would not remember them if you could; you could not if 
you would. But I doubt if I ever lose anything of the impres- 
sions of dusty, "dobe" Santa Fe. Possibly the kindness I re- 
ceived there would preserve the memory of the old place if there 
were nothing else, but the people and the place will serve each 
to keep the recollection of the other. 

Of Santa Fe as a business point I can say but little, since I 
have no weakness for business of any sort, but I know that if I 
was dyspeptic, worn out, a-weary of the world, tired of living 
and yet afraid of dying, I should come to Santa Fe in the sum- 



SOMETHING MORE AEOUT SANTA FE. 67 

mer-time and take some big, high white washed rooms iu a Mexi- 
can house, with the fireplace in the corner; and with books at 
home and a horse to ride abroad, I believe I could find a new 
body and a fresh soul. I would lounge on the plaza and admire 
the unique ugliness of the three old crones who have haunted it 
from time immemorial, and do nothing with great care and elab- 
oration for awhile, and then I would return to the United States 
and join the "march of progress," which is doubtless a great 
thing, but which makes many people footsore. 

What has been written has been written as the truth. I can 
only hope that such of my friends as may visit Santa Fe here- 
after may find there as much to cheer and interest them as I did. 



ALBUQUERQUE AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 



Leaving Santa Fe iu the middle of a bright afternoon (all af- 
ternoons are bright now), we arrived without disturbance at 
Lamy Junction, and lay around for the passenger train bound 
south, which, however, was preceded by an excursion train loaded 
with a party from Massachusetts. These excursions are a fea- 
ture of the "Santa Fe's" business this season, and have resulted 
iu bringing more gentlemen with gray side-whiskers and more 
ladies with eye glasses into these western wilds, than were ever 
known before. This party was piloted as several others have 
been lately, by ray old and valued friend Col. Ed. Haren, and 
it was a sort of satisfaction to know that these Massachusetts 
Republicans were under the guidance of an ex-Confederate Mis- 
sourian. Too many of a kind is no good. 

On Lamy, when the sun was low, the passenger train descended 
from the heights of the Glorieta pass, and we journeyed on through 
cliffs, boulders, sand plains, mesas, mountains, and the miscella- 
neous geology of this country, till in the starlight another famous 
river was added to those mine eyes have seen, to wit: the Rio 
Grande. It is a cousin to the Missouri, the Platte and the Ar- 
kansas. Like the latter, it has low banks and a double bottom 
like the Great American Ballot Box used in close districts. It 
is extensively used for irrigation purposes, but apparently loses 
nothing. If all the water were bailed out of it, plenty more 
would rise out of its sands. Rivers of this character are evi- 
dently intended for irrigating purposes, and nothing else. 

At Wallace, where we stopped for supper, was a mixed multi- 
tude. United States people in every variety ; bareheaded Mexican 
women smoking cigarettes; and Indians from a neighboring pu- 
eblo were standing around in their striped blankets and trying 
to sell turquoise and smoked topaz. The town was suffering or 
enjoying an Indian scare. Two or three Apaches had come into 
(68) 



ALBUQUERtJUE AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 69 

towu, SO it was said, and it was expected that they would come 
back with their frieuds aud relatives. To meet the possible 
invaders, a military company had been organized and was march- 
ing about in the dusk, the martial music being extracted from a 
tin pan. The "tame" Indians paid no attention to these warlike 
preparations, and evidently thought that the regular run of the 
turquoise business would not be interfered with by the Apaches. 

Albuquerque was the next point of interest. This town is 
Kansas headquarters, and here the Kansan abroad is at home. 
In Albuquerque it is said the justices of the peace are sworn to 
support the constitution and laws of the State of Kansas. If 
some wandering Kansas politician in search of votes should 
straggle over the line into Albuquerque he would never know the 
difference. 

Albuquerque, like Las Vegas, is two towns, but New Albu- 
querque is newer and Old Albuquerque is older than correspond- 
ing portions of Las Vegas. Las Vegas has a name signifying 
"The Meadows." Albuquerque was named for no less a person 
than the great Duke of Albuquerque, Viceroy of Mexico. In 
point of age, Albuquerque is one of the "way-up" towns, stand- 
ing in the class with Santa Fe. 

One of the pleasures of a trip to New Mexico is the opportu- 
nity afforded to compare the very new with the very old, and I 
have visited no place where this contrast is so sharp as at Albu- 
querque. At Las Vegas there is nothing very old, since the 
Mexican town was not started until 1835; at Santa Fe the new 
and old are somewhat mixed and blended ; but at Albuquerque, 
taking the two towns together, you have your comparison clear 
and distinct. In the new town you see the American settlement 
of two years old; in the old town the Spanish settlement of two 
hundred years old. In the new town there is scarcely a Mexican 
house in its original or any other shape; in the old there is 
scarcely an American house. The new town is full of stir; the 
old full of quietness. The new town has every modern improve- 
ment; the old, no change. You take the street cars in the 
new town and you go in a few moments from 1882 to 1668. The 
people, the avocations, the religion even, of the two places are 
5 



70 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

all different. Sin is said to be as old as man and time, but even 
the vices of the new town are those of young communities. The 
new town plays poker with a high hand, and the old sticks to 
raonte in the shade. 

Familiar as I am with the growth of towns in the West, I 
have never seen anything so rapid as that of the new town of 
Albuquerque. A town of shanties not unfrequently comes into 
being inside of a couple of years, but very seldom does a town 
spring into existence with daily papers, depots, railroad shops, 
big hotels, large wholesale establishments, gas works and a street 
railway, within the space of twenty-four months. This is, with- 
out exaggeration, what has happened at Albuquerque the younger. 
Of course I availed myself of the opportunity to look at both 
towns. The new town did not require careful inspection. It is 
spread out on broad streets, so much lumber, brick and mortar, 
and more coming; but the old town is a different matter. A 
curious maze of spreading adobe houses, with long, wooden-pil- 
lared porches, is old Albuquerque. It is situated on the banks 
of the Rio Grande, and acequias run all around and all over it. 
The most prominent feature in all Mexican towns is the ditch. 
It has the right of way against everything else. The flowing 
water comes suddenly from under an adobe wall and runs across 
the road and under another wall and out into a field, where it 
divides into a dozen streams, or spreads all around among the 
alfalfa or wheat. The pedestrian on the plaza suddenly encoun- 
ters a stream running across his path. It is the water let on 
above by some unseen party, who is sending the precious fluid to 
gladden his garden half a mile off, or to furnish mud for his 
adobe-making operations. In driving about the country, you 
drive over the all-pervading ditch a dozen times in as many hun- 
dred yards, and the power of water on this, to a Kansas man, 
wretched-looking soil, red as a bummer's nose and full of young 
boulders, is wonderful. The very cottonwood, in this country a 
spreading shade tree, takes on a brighter green. At Albuquerque 
and all along the valley of the Rio Grande are vineyards, planted 
long ago, bearing the Mission grape, introduced by the Francis- 
cans, and said to be, by all New-Mexicans, native and adopted, 



ALBUQUERQUE AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 71 

the finest grape iu the world. The vines are not trained on 
walls or trellises, or suffered to run up trees, as in Italy ; they are 
cut back till they give up trying to be vines at all, and turn into 
scrubby, gnarled and knotty bushes. Each bush can be counted 
on for a given number of bunches of grapes. 

While John Price, now liveryman of Albuquerque, New Town, 
formerly of North Topeka, Kansas, was driving me about, we 
visited the Indian school about a mile from the elder Albuquerque, 
The school is primarily a mission establishment of the Presbyte- 
rian church, but it is also a Government boarding school for young 
Indians; the Government of the United States paying $125 per 
annum toward the board, clothing and education of each Indian 
pupil. 

The school has taken possession of a former Mexican farm 
house, one of those rambling affairs which extend over a great 
acre of ground, with rooms enough for a hotel; and here we found 
about forty "little Injuns" under the principalship of Professor 
Shearer, formerly of Concordia, assisted by several ladies ap- 
pointed by the Presbyterian Board. The little Indians were 
recruited at the different pueblos of New Mexico, it being 
thought, perhaps, that the agricultural Indians would take more 
kindly to civilized ways than the children of the wild people. 
So here they were, forty dusky little Indians of unmixed blood, 
for the Pueblos do not intermarry with any other people. They 
were dressed in the clumsy clothes which civilization has imposed 
on us, and which we make it a duty to impose on other people, 
and were being taught the infernal intricacies of English orthog- 
raphy. They sang a hymn, and at my especial request, the bold 
anthem of "Johnny Schmoker." I thought that barbarous 
enough to gratify their native instincts, and make them feel happy- 
Prof. Shearer and his assistants are kind and conscientious, and 
do, I doubt not, all they can for their copper-colored charges; 
but at the risk of being called a heathen man and a publican, I 
will say that the experiment impressed me unfavorably. As a 
Kansas man, I have always been warmly in favor of killing 
Indians, but I do not like to see anybody tormented, and it seems 
to me that is all these Indian-educational experiments amount to. 



72 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS, 

These children speak Spanish : what is the use of teaching them 
English? If they grow up at their native pueblos they will 
plow, and cut wood and sell it, and work after their fashion. 
Why put them in the harness in a manual-labor school? They 
have Indian names. Why change them? They have Indian 
dresses. Why put them into horrid coats and hideous pants? 
It is not natural, and I do not believe it is healthful. I am told 
that the Indian boys sent to Carlisle cannot endure the climate, 
and die off. The same fact is observable elsewhere. I have a 
profound respect for everybody's good intentions, but I do wish 
there was some way to let the Indians alone. I had rather have 
seen one of these little Indian boys dressed in a shirt, or a 
liver pad, or a postage stamp, trotting happy and uncon- 
cerned around his native adobe, and bearing his own Indian 
name, and growing up an Indian, than to see him dressed up 
in uncomfortable clothes, with his name changed to Hezekiah 
Jones, and that instrument of torture, an English spelling- 
book in his hand. This may be what, in the language of the 
Pacific-coast humorist, is called a "flowery break," but what 
I have seen has sickened me with our whole system of In- 
dian management. If the whole business could be settled on the 
principle of "you let me alone and I will let you alone," I think 
heaven and earth would have reason to rejoice. 

In this connection I may say that I have been impressed by 
the views of Mr. Bandelier, a scientist, who has lived in Indian 
villages and studied the inhabitants. He says that the Spanish 
in Mexico, after a century or so of persecution and interference, 
finally concluded to let the Indians alone, save that they were 
obliged to accept the Catholic religion. The Indians took as 
much of this religion as they wanted, and let the rest alone. In 
other matters the Indians were left to do as they pleased ; govern 
themselves in their villages, preserve their customs, their tribal 
relations, etc. In time, of themselves, they abandoned their 
ancient ways, became citizens, took part in the affairs of the 
country, furnished soldiers and generals for the Mexican army, 
and Benito Juarez, the greatest man Mexico has produced, was 
an Indian of unmixed blood. I do not believe the Mexican 



ALBUQUERQUE AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 73 

Indians differ much iu nature from our Indians, yet how differ- 
ent the result in " benighted Mexico," as we are fond of calling 
it, and the United States. We began wrong and have followed 
along with a mixture of treaties and fights, and Bibles and 
whisky, and missionaries and thieves, and fraud and force, and 
annuities and starvation, and we have the cheek all the time to 
call it an "Indian policy." The result is, that the Indian has 
now no fate but death. Put him in school, and he dies of pneu- 
monia or consumption; turn him loose, and he kills himself with 
whisky; put him on a reservation, and he breaks out and kills 
the first man he meets; and after giving a great deal of trouble, 
gets killed himself This is what the most pious, the most en- 
lightened, the cutest, the smartest, the most ingenious Nation on 
earth does about Indians. 

Among the pleasant incidents of my visit to Albuquerque was 
a trip to Bear canon. It may be stated, in the first place, that 
every modern New-Mexican town has its own mountains or range 
of mountains, and that each mountain or range has its caiion or 
canons. The distance from town varies from three to eighteen 
miles; consequently this is the chosen land of picnics. The 
canon always furnishes a resort, and you know it will never rain 
till July. A sort of picnic was the gathering in the Bear caiion, 
twelve miles from Albuquerque. 

The party consisted of Mr. W. S. Burke, formerly of the 
Leavenworth Times; Capt. George E. Beates, of Junction City, 
now employed on Government surveys in Arizona; Mr. Whit- 
ney; a driver, name unknown; the writer; and an old prospector, 
who, naturally gifted in that direction, has developed by practice 
into the most enormous liar in the Territory of New Mexico. It 
was up hill all the way across the dry sloping prairie that 
stretches to the foot of the Sandias, but I think he gave us a lie 
for each revolution of the wagon wheels. Being quite deaf, he 
could not hear the glowing falsehoods which were returned him 
as a sort of small change for his tremendous fabrications, but he 
was very, very happy as it was. His object was to show us in- 
dications of mineral he had discovered in the canon, but his 
labor was in vain. After our experience on the way up, he might 



74 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

have tumbled into a two-foot streak of twenty-dollar gold pieces, 
and we would not have believed in him. 

The canon, to return to the object of the excursion, was found 
a beautiful spot; a winding cleft amid enormous piles of rock 
massed in every fantastic shape, and finally solidifying into per- 
pendicular cliffs. A mountain stream clear as crystal flowed 
over a bed of shining gravel, but utterly disappeared in the 
sands within a hundred yards from the mouth of the canon. So 
the little stream goes on day and night, year after year, with its 
fruitless labors, gathering the melted snow from the mountain- 
top — gathering from each spring along its way, only to pour its 
flood at last upon the evil and unthankful desert of the plain. 



SOCORRO. 

At Albuquerque the matter of miWing stares you in the face, 
and you are obliged to confront the question whether you are a 
miner, a prospector, or a mining broker ; whether you have mines 
to buy or mines to sell ; in short, to decide whether you have any 
past, present or future interests in mines. 

For myself, I have no earthly interest in any mine or mines, 
and unless the knowledge is acquired on the present journey I 
shall never really^know anything about mines. This ignorance 
I enjoy in common with a vast number of my fellow-citizens who 
pretend to know more. There is no subject on which more notes 
of talk are issued on a small paid-up capital of knowledge than 
this question of mining. As some of the most inveterate gam- 
blers I have ever known were men who had no skill at cards 
and never could acquire any, so these mountains and mesas are 
full of men talking about carbonates and chlorides and sulphur- 
ets, and spending their own money, but more frequently the 
money of other people who have no practical knowledge of mines 
or mining, and whose words and opinions are of no more value 
than the gentle warbliugs of a burro. From such it is of course 
useless to seek information, and yet they are the men who pre- 
sume to instruct the "tender-foot," as they call the man who has 
arrived in the country two weeks later than themselves. 

At Albuquerque I was a-weary of the talk about prospects 
and "good indications" and assays, and all that, and went to 
Socorro to see a mine in active operation and sending ore to the 
smelter or stamp mill. 

The journey from Albuquerque to Socorro was made in the 
night, and no note can be made of the scenery along the road. 
Socorro was seen for the first time in the early light of the next 
morning. 

(75) 



76 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

Socorro is a Spanish word, siguifyiug "succor." It is said to 
derive its name from the fact that the fugitives from Santa Fe, 
driven out by the Indians in 1680, here received help from their 
countrymen at El Paso. The story as told now is that the Span- 
iards were shut up in a pueblo at or near the present site of 
Socorro, and that a messenger jumped down a rock 200 feet high, 
spreading out his coat tail and using it as a parachute, and so 
reaching the ground in safety, made his way to El Paso and re- 
turned with help. The story of the jump I do not believe by 
several feet, nor do I believe it is of native origin. It sounds 
like a story invented in front of the old Tefft House in Topeka, 
and enlarged by the effects of the New-Mexican'climate. How- 
ever, whether the story of Socorro is true or not, the town is here; 
a good-looking Mexican town to begin with, with a sort of double 
plaza and an adobe church of great antiquity and extreme ugli- 
ness. The American town is joined on to the Mexican town, and 
will probably inclose it in time. I have not seen in the suburbs 
of any other New-Mexican town so many pleasant homes. The 
irrigating business is carried on extensively, as at old Albuquer- 
que, and surrounding the town is the same maze of narrow lanes 
with high adobe walls. Many cottouwoods and other trees flour- 
ish along the banks of the acequias. One lane and one tree has 
a history. Up this lane the vigilantes were accustomed to march 
gentlemen who were no longer useful nor ornamental in society, 
and on this gentle and unpretending cottonwood, with a limb 
projecting over the dusty lane, they were hung, the top of the 
garden wall serving as the platform of the scaffold. This severe 
treatment was so efficacious that it is no longer needful, and the 
last parties to a "hold-up" were only horse-whipped and com- 
pelled to leave the town. These little episodes are unpleasant, 
but they serve to decide whether a town shall be ruled by its 
roughs or its better element. 

It must not be understood, however, that courts and the judi- 
cial ermine, and the scales of justice, do not exist in New Mexico. 
I saw the United States court in session at old Albuquerque. 
The hall of justice was in a low-ceiled room in an adobe building 
near the plaxa. Two lawyers were enlightening the court on the 



SOCORRO. 77 

subject of deeds. The jury, composed of Mexicaus, did not 
understand a word of it all, and looked as stupid and miserable 
as the average American jury. His Honor, a newly-arrived 
New-Yorker, seemed to have a pained and apprehensive look; 
perhaps, however, he was only trying to look judicial. There 
v/as a crowd of lawyers. They were as thick as fiddlers in a 
place formerly much talked about. It is needless to say that an 
attorney from Larned, Kansas, sat in the midst. The whole 
scene was as tiresome as a district court in the United States. It 
is well; if people will have civilization and enlightenment, let 
them take the consequences. 

Socorro boasts one of the few stamp mills and smelters in this 
part of New Mexico. From the multiplicity of mines and min- 
ing companies one would suppose these structures would be as 
common as school houses in Kansas. They are not, however. 
A stamp mill is a mill whose ground grist is silver, with which 
you can buy anything, except an interest in the kingdom of 
heaven: A stamp mill, therefore, seen for the first time, is a 
matter worthy of inspection. 

The stamp mill at Socorro is an average structure of the kind, 
I suppose. It cost more than it ought to, owing to a variety of 
untoward circumstances. The gentleman who showed me over 
it said that such a mill, under favorable conditions, could be built 
for $45,000. A stamp mill is in appearance very much like a 
coal breaker — a high, raw-boned aflair, with an inclined railway 
up which the ore, which looks like red dust and broken sand- 
stone, is hauled in little iron cars. Once at the top of the house, 
the ore is fed from a hopper into a sort of iron jaw, which cracks 
it, and then water is introduced and it goes down under the 
stamps. These stamps are pillars, or rather pestles, of chilled 
iron, which are lifted and dropped by a cam movement, which at 
the same time gives them a rotary motion. Every Yankee boy 
who has ever "pounded out corn" in a barrel can understand the 
operation. The pounding process is the most natural, and is su- 
perior to any grinding machinery. The ore reduced to a powder 
with water, drops down into various tanks and is subjected to the 
action of salt and hot water, which effects chloridization, what- 



78 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

ever that is, and finally the junction of the silver with quick- 
silver is effected. This mass of silver and quicksilver is retorted, 
i. e., it is heated in a retort; the quicksilver is vaporized and passes 
over to be condensed and saved with very little waste, and the 
silver remains. This is the amalgamation process which every- 
body in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and California 
knows all about, but of which thousands of people in Kansas 
have no adequate conception. This process seems very compli- 
cated and scientific, but it was practiced in this country by the 
Spaniards centuries ago. With their rude machinery they did 
not do as much in a given time as we do, but our processes are in 
substance the same. Col. George Noble, formerly of the Kansas 
Pacific, who has looked at many old Spanish mines, says no ore 
is found in the waste. They dug out all the ore and carried it 
"clear away." They evidently knew all about mining. 

The smelter was not running, and so I can tell nothing of the 
operations. When I get farther along in my education I will 
describe it. There is a distinction between ores, some requiring 
the amalgamation process; others the smelting. I am not "way 
up" enough yet in the business to describe the difference. The 
stamp mill at Socorro is employed exclusively on the ore from 
the Torrence mine, of which more further on. 

Back of Socorro, if a town can be said to have a back, and 
three miles away, rises a high-shouldered eminence, not so sharp 
and flinty as most New-Mexican mountains, called Socorro 
Mountain, and from it comes silver and warm water. Through 
the kindness of Mr. Walker, formerly of Holton, Kansas, we 
were furnished a conveyance, and Dr. Lapham, of Socorro, as a 
guide. We journeyed along over a plain covered with yellow 
flowers, a sort of Mexican cross between a buttercup and a dan- 
delion, and kept close to an acequia filled with warm water. This 
stream, conveyed in troughs, turns the high, narrow overshot 
wheels of no less than three little grist mills, which formerly 
ground a good deal of wheat raised by the Mexicans in the Rio 
Grande valley. A hot-water mill can count for a novelty. The 
spring was reached at the foot of the mountain, or a low-lying 
spur of it. The water comes out of a cleft in the rocks, and 



SOCORRO. 79 

forms a pool fifty feet long by twenty-five wide. The water is so 
clear that the atmosphere forms the only comparison. The water 
is not hot, but warm. A red crag rises perpendicularly from the 
water. A visitor usually says: "I think this rock is volcanic in 
its origin." In this case it is in order for some other visitor to 
say: "You are quite mistaken; it is sedimentary." How impos- 
ing are these discussions in which neither party knows anything 
about the question. 

Whether the heat of the spring is due to volcanic or chemical 
action, it is a great blessing to Socorro. It has uncommon 
cleansing pi'operties, both for people and shirts ; it turns grist 
mills, waters gardens, and is occasionally drunk with other sub- 
stances, which in their effect confirm the volcanic theory. 

Our guide proved most entertaining and instructive, and after 
pointing out the beauty and usefulness of the spring, we went on 
to the "front and center" of the mountain, to the Torrence mine. 

The mouth of the mine is covered by a building a hundred 
yards from the base. A silver mine is a clean mine; there is 
nothing black about it. It is all white or red dust of unknown 
depth, and piles of ore and waste. The first thing that strikes 
the observer at the Torrence is the solid finish and apparent cost 
of everything. The engine, the buildings, the wire cables, all 
spoke of money spent. 

Under the guidance of Mr. Newton, the superintendent, we 
went down the slope into the mine. The entrance, like all the 
rest of the mine, is planked on the sides and overhead. It was 
like a long box. When we reached the bottom of the slope, 
which was done by means of steps, we had descended 203 feet. 

The ore in the Torrence lies in a stratum tipped up at an angle 
of forty-five degrees. Consequently, galleries are run in at dif- 
ferent levels, the main gallery being the lowest. Then the miner 
follows the vein upward along the incline, and this is called 
"stoping." Occasionally the vein "swells" — that is, becomes 
wider — and sometimes it "pinches." But wherever it goes the 
miner follows it as a ferret follows a rat. If it goes down, he 
goes down, and if it goes up, he climbs the slopes. If he loses it, 
he finds it again. Wherever that red-and-white streak goes, 



80 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

there he goes. It seemed strauge, that eager and toilsome bur- 
rowing down in the depths of the earth after a few pounds of 
shining metal which few of us can get hold of after all. 

The mine was perfectly free from water or even dampness. 
New Mexico must be dry clear to the bottom. The hill in which 
the mine is situated seems a pile of loose rocks — the walls broke 
down easily before the pick. But this easy digging makes tim- 
bering necessary, and a great amount of native lumber has been 
used up. 

There are now about one hundred men in the mine. Those 
addressed were Americans and bright men, who spoke as if they 
could own a mine if they wished. In fact, many of them are 
prospectors who have gone below ground to raise a stake, and 
when they have got another start will continue their quest for a 
mine which shall make them rich in a minute. 

But while we are talking about mines, all the stories pale be- 
fore those told of the Lake Valley group — stories of ore so fine 
that a lighted candle will melt the lead and leave pure silver; 
stories of offers of $50,000 for the ore one man could dig out in 
six hours; stories of the Bridal Chamber, lined with silver and 
lead so that a pick driven into the wall sticks as if driven into a 
mass of putty. And they say these mines are owned by Q,uakers 
in Philadelphia. So goes luck in this world: while hundreds of 
miners, experts, gamblers, speculators, etc., are charging wildly 
over the country, betting and losing, these sleek Quakers come in 
for the fiittest silver mine in creation. It is all so wonderful that 
I shall make an effort to go to Lake Valley. 

Dr. L., without making pretensions to being an antiquarian, 
has visited many places of antiquity in New Mexico, and among 
them a point sixty miles from Socorro known as Gran Quivira. 
Here are the remains, now utterly deserted, of a very large 
town. It is now fifteen miles from water, yet there are traces of 
ditches. This town has a ruined church, and this was the Qui- 
vira of Coronado. At the risk of being no longer allowed to 
live in Kansas, I must say that nobody in New Mexico believes 
that Coronado ever visited Kansas. This is humiliating, partic- 
ularly since Major lumau has marched him directly to the bluff 



SOCORRO. 81 

of South Fourth street, Atcbisou, ou which Senator lugalls's 
residence is at present located. The claim has been insisted on 
because Coronado describes his meeting with the buffalo; but those 
beasts have, within the memory of living man, been seen within 
twenty miles of Albuquerque. I am afraid Coronado as a Kan- 
sas explorer is a myth. It is a consolation to know, however, 
that if he failed to discover Kansas plenty of better men have 
found it. 



A GLIMPSE OF MEXICO. 



ci.:£::^^:^:ti^, 7^^-, >^^y^ 



The train leaving Socorro for the southwest at one o'clock in 
the morning crosses the famous Jornada del Muerto before it is 
daylight, consequently I did not s.ee the desolate region made 
fomiliar to Kansas readers by one of "Deane Mouahan's" strik- 
ing sketches. But I may say here, that where I have had the 
opportunity for observation, I have had occasion to testify to the 
charming fidelity of our Kansas writer to every detail of New- 
Mexican life and scenery. 

Shortly after leaving the borders of the Jornada, we entered 
upon what a fellow-passenger assured me was the "Garden of 
New Mexico." He referred to the borders of the Rio Grande, in 
which are located the vineyards and orchards of Las Cruces, 
But for the railroad, it is evidently "over the garden wall," run- 
ning through a land devoted to rocks, soap-weed and cactus, the 
most prominent of the hundred or so varieties of the latter being 
what a friend calls the "broom-handle" species, which throws up 
its leafless arms like a devil-fish, and at the end of each bears a 
single brilliant scarlet flower. 

Fort Selden, standing in a wilderness, I took for an abandoned 
adobe, when several blue-coats made their appearance amid the 
roofless walls. The post has been reoccupied by a portion of the 
large force now concentrating in this region to chase a few score 
Indians. The next military establishment passed was a neat 
little post. Fort Bliss. Here was an immense pile of the roots 
of the mesquite, used for fuel, for here, as an " old residenter " 
remarks, you climb for water and dig for wood. 

Here was El Paso, "The Pass," where the Rio Grande breaks 
through a rocky barrier; where the Atchison, Topeka & Santa 
Fe crowds by with it; and once through it you are at the north- 
ern gate of Mexico. The Spaniards long ago recognized this 
(82) 






A GLIMPSE or MEXICO. 83 

fact, aud named their town El Paso del Norte — the Pass of the 
North. The Americans caught at the idea, and re-named an old 
Texas town El Paso also. 

This tawny town is the dividing line between two Nations. 
That low shore beyond the swift yellow stream is Mexico, a for- 
eign laud. Mexico: the name was associated with some of my 
earliest recollections. The " Mexican war," a great war until it 
and all our other wars were lost in a mightier struggle, began with 
the first link of the continuous chain of my memory. What 
heroes they were — Taylor and Scott, and Ringgold with his flying 
artillery, and Capt. May with his dragoons. How Capt. May 
used to "show up" in the pictures, riding over the Mexican guns 
aud the green-coated cannoneers; and how colossal we thought 
the battles, Resaca de la Palma, and Palo Alto, and Molino del 
Rey, and Buena Vista. We remember, now, only that certain 
great generals were lieutenants in those battles. Notwithstand- 
ing all that, the impressions of childhood are hard to overcome, 
and Mexico has always been to me a land of interest, a laud to 
be visited sometime — aud here at last was Mexico. 

The American town of El Paso, although a growing place, the 
junction of the Southern Pacific, Texas Pacific, aud Atchison, 
Topeka & Santa Fe roads, failed for the time to interest me, 
even though I found at the Grand Central ray old friend Col. 
George Noble, who sat up with the Kansas Pacific in its infancy, 
but has now retired from railroading and is devoted to town lots 
and mines, with, the ueighbors say, satisfactory financial results. 
I crossed the river at the first opportunity, and stood on the soil 
of Mexico. A young Mexican with a revolver and cartridge- 
belt, who said "Bueno," as the carriage went off the ferry-l^oat, 
was the ouly evidence of a foreign national sovereignty. 

The American Consul in Paso del Norte is Mr. Richardson, 
but the American official most visited by his fellow-countrymen 
is Governor George T. Anthony, Superintendent of the Mexican 
Central Railroad. He was found in his office, looking much the 
same as when he transacted business in the southeast corner of 
the capitol at Topeka, save perhaps a trifle older from passing 
years and much hard work. 



84 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

This at last was a genuine Mexican town, still sporting the 
cactus and the eagle; no New Mexico affair, subjected to thirty- 
six years of the rule of the "Estados Unidos del Norte," as I saw 
it on a Mexican map. Well, hardly; for in going up the street 
I saw the sign "The Little Church Around the Corner;" the 
American rum mill had crossed the frontier. Still it was Mexi- 
can. Dark faces, two-story huts with a piazza all around, and 
women sitting flat on the narrow bulkheads, made of "cobbles," 
were the rule, and fair faces and a swinging gait the exception. 
The streets were narrow, almost deserted by wheeled carriages, 
with the interminable wall of adobe, white plastered houses 
stretching away on either side, and fairly shining in the sun. It 
was so still; so unlike the Texas town on the other side; so un- 
like anything under the American heaven. Of course there was 
the church, plastered to shining whiteness on the outside, much 
more imposing than the churches in New Mexico, which stand 
unadorned but not beautiful in their native mud color. Having 
read "The Priest of El Paso," we went to see him. He was found 
to be an old man, very seedily dressed in what soldiers call "citi- 
zens" clothes; he put on a surplice and went to the church door 
with his sacristan, a Mexican in jacket, and with the heaviest 
and blackest hair I ever saw, and baptized the little baby of a 
humble Mexican couple. There was a look of feeble melancholy 
in the priest's face, which seemed to tell the truth that in Mexico 
the church has fallen upon evil days. The laborer, however, is 
worthy of his hire, and fortunately in this case the hire is fixed, 
for I saw on the wall the printed permit of the Archbishop of 
Obispo, giving the fees to be charged for clerical services ; for 
baptism so much, for funerals so much, and so on to the end of 
the chapter. 

Near the church was a little half ruined plaza. There was a 
low, circular wall in the center, which had sometime perhaps in- 
closed a fountain; there were stone seats all around, and two 
rows of trees and little ditches, or grooves rather, to allow the 
water to run over their roots and keep them green. I dare say 
that under the tyrannical rule of the Spanish Viceroys the people, 
young and old, gathered in the plaza of an evening and were 



A GLIMPSE OF MEXICO. 85 

happy; but with freedom came eternal revolution, aud the pleas- 
ure ground fell into decay. Perhaps the Yankee will come and 
worship his god, Politics, in this plaza, to the sound of trombones 
and bass tubas, and clarionets and ward orators and other wind 
instruments. 

On Thursday evening we rode in aud around the town, and 
Gov. Anthony pointed out the new depot of the Mexican Cen- 
tral, which is to be a fine house, built of adobes with a placita, 
with all the offices opening into it; and there was also a new 
freight house, in the construction of which the lumber of half a 
dozen States had been employed, California furnishing the red- 
wood shingles. Then there were the big locomotives named for 
the Mexican States, the "Zacatecas," the "Jalisco," and the 
others. 

The common Mexican does not seem at home in towns, nor is 
he a success as a town-builder, but give him a little plot of 
ground and an acequeia, and he will give the American author 
of "Ten Acres Enough" half a dozen points, and beat him. 
How pleasant it all was: the gardens and the big pear trees, and 
the vineyards, and the little squares of purple alfalfa, and all 
the people out of doors and at work, for the water is let into the 
little ditches at sunset. It was a picture of quiet and content- 
ment, though boisterous happiness appears unknown in this 
country. There is a subdued look about all animate creatures, 
even to the plump, olive-skinned children, who look at you fix- 
edly with unblinking round black eyes as you pass. 

From this evening scene a feature of every Mexican landscape 
should not be omitted, to wit, the goats, who come in a compact 
mass, brown and yellow and spotted, down the dusty lane, at- 
tended by their swarthy and ragged herdsman. Mexico would 
not be Mexico without the burros, the curs of low degree, and 
the goats. These are indispensable. 

Returning to the Texas El Paso after the drive, we left it again 
in the early light of the next (Friday) morning for Chihuahua 
via the Central Mexican Railroad as far as Ojo-Laguna, the end of 
the track, and thence by the company's ambulance to the objec- 
tive point. We started from the " Santa Fe " depot, the track of 
6 



86 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

the A. T. & S. F. connecting with the Mexican Central in the 
center of the bridge across the Rio Grande. The Mexican shore 
reached, we sped along on our journey southwest. The road 
runs almost in a straight line south, and has a maximum grade 
of only thirty-five feet to the mile. The route seems designed 
by nature for a railroad. It is, for the most part, a level plain ; 
to the left what may be termed a range of high hills; to the right 
a range of low mountains, the order being occasionally changed. 
The ranges arfe broken into groups, bearing different names, the 
most noticeable being the Caudelarias, or Candle Mountains, so 
called from the signal fires of the Indians, frequently seen flash- 
ing upon the peaks at night. As the road proceeds southward 
the country grows less sandy, till at the plains of Encinillas it 
may be called a fair prairie. All the streams in Northern Chi- 
huahua empty into lakes, or lagunas, which have no visible out- 
let. At the largest one of these, Ojo-Laguna, we found the 
boarding-train and the ambulance; the track is laid three or four 
miles farther, and the grading is completed to Chihuahua. 

At the boarding-train was found a large party, mostly Ameri- 
cans, though a few slender Mexicans in scrapes and sandals 
served to form a contrast with the burly and bearded men of the 
North, Dinner eaten, we started with our four-mule ambulance 
to cover the sixty miles that lay between us and Chihuahua. 

The road for the most part was an excellent one, but it trav- 
erses a solitude for many miles. Over all the country has rested 
the shadow of constant danger. For in the canons in the moun- 
tains has lurked the merciless Apache, ready at some unexpected 
moment to rush or steal out on his errand of plunder or murder. 
Every mile was marked by some story of his cruelty. But his 
hour has come; the Mexican, after a century of sufieriug, has at 
last driven his enemy to bay, and hunts him to death in his moun- 
tain fastnesses. Our own troops are powerless in face of the res- 
ervation system, which offers murderers and robbers a safe asylum. 
In Mexico there are no reservations. 

The country we were traversing is a vast cattle range, occupied 
by the herds of Governor Terassas, of Chihuahua, who claims an 
immense region. The cattle could be seen far and near, and oc- 



A GLIMPSE OF MEXICO. 87 

casionally a herd crossed the road ; a bull in the advance, whose 
high head and long sharp horns recalled the pictures of Spanish 
bull fights; then came the gaunt black-and-white, dun-and-yel- 
low cows, with their calves by their sides. In thirty miles we 
saw but three inhabited places; and one of them, the ranch of 
Eucinillas, with its little church, lay miles away under the 
shadow of the mountain. We passed near the two others. They 
were virtually forts of adobe, each with its round tower pierced 
with loop-holes ; near each was a corral made of bush, or poles 
fastened to the cross-pieces with thongs of rawhide. A solitary 
door aflbrded admission to the placita; the long line of outer 
walls showed no openings in the way of windows. Everything 
of value — wool, hides, wheat — is kept inside the walls. It has 
been so long a land of perpetual danger and watchfulness. 

As darkness drew on we saw across the plain the four white 
tents of the engineer party, and drove over there for supper. 
The boys were found in comfortable condition, and interested in 
their few Mexican neighbors. They told some curious stories 
of the effects of the yerba loca, or mad-weed, which grows in 
these plains. Two of their mules having eaten it went absolutely 
crazy, and suffered from swelled heads the next morning ; yet, 
having eaten it once, eagerly sought for it again. The weed ap- 
pears to operate on mules as whisky does on men. I was sorry 
to hear of the existence of such a plant ; an inebriated mule 
around a camp must be a terrible calamity. 

The cloudy night had settled down when we resumed our soli- 
tary way. There was no sound except the clatter of the hoofs 
of our mules and the crunching of the wheels in the gravel. A 
barking of dogs heralded our approach to the few houses called 
Sacramento, where there was once a show of fight between our 
troops and the Mexicans in the old "Mexican war;" then all was 
still again for miles and miles. Then we saw a light; at times it 
seemed directly in front; then it appeared on one side or the 
other; now we are bearing down upon it; it is at the end of a 
long, straight avenue; we shall reach it presently; no, it is re- 
ceding; perhaps it is but a star; no, here it is again. So with 
weary eyes we watched the light. Now it shines, clear and well 



88 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

defined. It is a street lamp; it throws its gleam on the front of 
some buildings. We pass under the over-hanging boughs of 
trees; we rattle over a stone bridge; the blank walls of houses 
arise, white, ghostly, vague, on either hand in the light of lamps 
few and far between. The sharp cry of a sentry comes out of 
the dark, "Quien vivef" '' Amigos," is the reply, and we pass 
on. Here is an open space; lamps gleam through trees and 
shrubbery; high up between the towers of a church shines an 
illuminated clock face; the brazen clangor of a bell drops down 
from the height; it is 3 o'clock in the morning, and this is the 
plaza of Chihuahua. 



SOMETHING ABOUT CHIHUAHUA. 



^JIL^cjL^^ ht^\., }ncy zr. /li 



The city of Chihuahua, which in a few weeks will be as access- 
ible to the people of the United States as New York and Phila- 
delphia, is situated 224 miles, by rail, south of El Paso, Texas, 
and 900 miles north of the City of Mexico, with which it will 
be connected by rail within two years. 

It is the largest city in the extreme Northern Mexico, has had 
a brilliant past, and seems destined to a prosperous future. It 
will be visited within the next twelve months by thousands of 
Western people — including a large proportion of Kansans — 
drawn by business, pleasure, and curiosity. 

Chihuahua is the capital of the State of Chihuahua, the north- 
eastern State of the Republic of Mexico; it is the seat of justice 
for the county of Iturbide, and the military headquarters of the 
department at present commanded by Gen. Fuero. It is the site 
of a Government mint, and generally the political and commer- 
cial capital of the North. It is the first point reached by the 
great Mexican Central Railway, (an extension of the Atchison, 
Topeka & Santa Fe system,) and no city of importance will ever 
be built within two hundred miles of it in any direction. 

Chihuahua has a municipal government, the present mayor 
being Don Juan N. Zubiran, for many years the Mexican consul 
at El Paso, Texas, and one of the most progressive of the public 
men of Mexico. He speaks and writes English with fluency, 
and is the friend of every respectable American who comes to 
Chihuahua. He is an encyclopedia of Mexican history and pol- 
itics; has known every Mexican political or military chief of 
prominence from the days of Santa Anna, and was the devoted 
personal friend of the late President Juarez. Kindly, affable, a 
friend of popular education, he has laid the city of Chihuahua 
(89) 



90 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

under everlasting obligations, and is the creditor of a large num- 
ber of foreigners for information extended. 

Chihuahua is well paved, has waterworks of an ancient pattern, 
and is lighted with naptha lamps ; it has several hotels, mostly 
frequented by Americans ; two American barber shops, and one 
bootblack of native origin. It has banks, stores of all kinds, a 
theater, a, plaza de toros, from which the bulls and matadors hsive 
however departed, and which is occupied at present by a Mexi- 
can circus company, which performs every Sunday. The clown 
speaks Spanish, and is therefore unable to bore Americans. 

Historically, Chihuahua may be said to be a comparatively 
modern place, for a Spanish-American city. It lays no such 
claim to antiquity as Santa Fe or several other towns in New 
Mexico. It was in fact as Sefior Zubiran says, "nothing but 
grasshoppers," until 1702, when the great silver mine of Santa 
Eulalia attracted attention to the neighborhood. The town grew 
after the fashion of raining towns in other times and centuries, 
and in 1718, by royal authority, the settlement was organized as 
a village, under the name of San Francisco de Chihuahua. The 
immense richness of the mines, the fact that there was no other 
town of importance within hundreds of miles, and the wealth and 
energy of its inhabitants, combined to make Chihuahua a marvel 
of prosperity. Other colonies and towns were the outgrowth of 
missions, and were located on the site of Indian pueblos. Chi- 
huahua sprang into existence under the shadow of its mountain. 
El Coronel ("The Colonel"), the product of mining and com- 
merce. When Capt. Zebulon M. Pike was detained here a pris- 
oner in 1806, he found a fine city of 60,000 people. It is well 
authenticated that in the middle of the last century the town had 
70,000 inhabitants. Its rulers were merchants and mine owners. 
It was also a manufacturing town, and within the last fifty years 
articles from the State of Chihuahua were sold in great quantities 
at Santa Fe. 

The era of greatest pTosperity was probably reached about 
1727, when the great church on the plaza, called the Cathedral — 
but which it is not, as Chihuahua has not and never has had a 



SOMETHING ABOUT CHIHUAHUA. 91 

bishop — was commenced. It was built as the parish church of 
Chihuahua by the business men of the city, out of a fund raised 
by a contribution of 122 cents on each mark, or eight ounces, of 
silver produced in the vicinity. Commenced in 1727, the ex- 
terior was completed in 1741 ; the interior was not finished till 
1761. The building proper cost $600,000 ; of the cost of the 
interior no one presumes to make an estimate. In those days 
the banks of the little river Chuvisca, which flows by the town, 
were lined with smelters and reduction works, and immense 
piles of waste can still be traced for miles. Outside of the pres- 
ent city the foundations of ancient houses can be traced, scattered 
over a large district. Here was a great city, enormous in its 
wealth, with its fine Alameda thronged with pleasure-seekers 
every morning and evening, and yet as utterly shut out from 
every foreign country as if it had been situated in the interior 
of Africa. The Spanish erected a more than Chinese wall about 
the country. Within a few years it has required two months 
for a letter to reach Chihuahua from the United States. 

When the decline of Chihuahua began, is hard to state; proba- 
bly with the abandonment of the policy of enslaving the Indians 
and working them in the mines. The staggering blow was dealt 
by the Mexican revolution, which lasted from 1810 to 1821. 
This eleven years of war was followed by the years of perpetual 
revolution, which have now happily ended. The Spaniard 
worked no mines except by slave labor; now comes the Ameri- 
can with his mighty slave, steam, which performs the work of 
millions of bondmen, and the restoration of Mexico and of 
Chihuahua is at hand. After all the backsets and calamities, 
the town is still estimated to contain 19,000 people. Most of its 
public buildings have survived the shocks of time and revolu- 
tion. 

Chihuahua, nine hundred miles from the City of Mexico, the 
political center, has yet had its share in the wars of the country. 
The people bore an honorable part in the struggle for independ- 
ence, and in this city occurred the saddest tragedy of the revo- 
lution, the murder of Hidalgo. Amid all the bitter contentious 
of Mexican politics, no voice has ever been raised against the 



92 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

character of Hidalgo. A scholar and a priest, he first distin- 
guished himself by his efforts in behalf of his parishioners; he 
introduced among thera the silk-worm and the honey-bee. Al- 
though allied by his profession and his family to the ruling 
class, he yet raised in the face of what seemed resistless power 
the standard of revolt. He foretold his own fate, saying that it 
was the fortune of men who inaugurated revolutions to perish in 
them. After the disastrous battle of the Bridge of Calderon, 
Hidalgo was captured and brought to Chihuahua, where he was 
shot within the walls of the Hospital Real. He died with the 
utmost resolution; giving his gold watch to the jailer, and divid- 
ing what coin he had about his person among the firing party, 
to whom he said: "I will place my hand upon my breast; it 
will serve as the mark at which you are to fire." The hospital 
has been nearly all torn down to make room for a new govern- 
ment building now in course of erection. A monument has 
been erected near the spot of his execution, but it bears no in- 
scription ; no carved word or line is needed to remind Mexicans 
that here died the purest and most unselfish man whose name 
has yet adorned the annals of Mexico. His head is engraved 
on the postal stamps of the country, and on the walls of the 
council chamber of Chihuahua hangs his portrait, with those of 
Morelos, Guerrero, Juarez, and General Mejia, Minister of War 
to the latter. It is sad but true that in the long line of public 
men who have figured in Mexico the names of Hidalgo and 
Juarez alone seem to receive universal veneration. Hidalgo 
died with his work hardly begun, but Juarez lived to see his 
country freed from the invader, and every substantial reform 
now doing its beneficent work in Mexico is the result of his 
labors and counsels. 

During the invasion of the French, Juarez, driven from his 
capital, resided for a year in Chihuahua. Congress had delegated 
all its powers to him. He was the government. The French 
twice occupied Chihuahua; the second time they were driven 
out. At one time so desperate were the fortunes of the Republic 
that Juarez took refuge in Paso del Norte, but he never aban- 
doned Mexican territory. During his stay at El Paso the ex- 



SOMETHING ABOUT CHIHUAHUA. 93 

penses of the government are said to have been thirty dollars a 
day, a sum which was contributed by the citizens of Chihuahua. 

Chihuahua has had two revolutions, but appears to have been 
fairly governed except during the reign of a drunken vagabond. 
Gen. Angel Trias, who destroyed one of the finest churches in 
the city and committed other depredations. The present Gov- 
ernor, Don Luis Terassas, has been in power a long time, and is 
said to be liberal in his views. His brother, Col. Terassas, distin- 
guished himself in the destruction of Victorio and his murdering 
Indians. 

Chihuahua is to some extent an adobe town, but the public 
buildings and principal edifices are built in a great measure of a 
stone obtained from a quarry three miles from town, which in 
texture resembles the maguesian limestone found in Kansas, but 
in color somewhat resembles the Caen stone so much used for 
building in Paris. 

The society in Chihuahua is at present largely Mexican. There 
are a few foreigners who have long been domiciled here, have in- 
termarried with Mexican families, and have exercised a great in- 
fluence. 

Henrique Miiller, a German, was for many years a ruler in 
Chihuahua. The family of Macmanus, originally from Carlisle, 
Pennsylvania, has been in Chihuahua for forty years, and the 
second generation is now in business here. Many people antici- 
pate a complete revolution, social and otherwise, with the coming 
of the Mexican Central Railroad, but what I have seen of the 
survival of the Mexican habits and customs in New Mexico, 
after over thirty years of American rule, leads me to think that 
it will be several years before Chihuahua ceases to be to Ameri- 
cans a foreign city in many things. 

The altitude of Chihuahua counteracts the latitude. Here, in 
the last quarter of May, the weather is like the June of Kansas, with 
a few hours of July in the middle of the day. There is nothing 
in the atmosphere or the vegetation to suggest an extreme south- 
ern, much less tropical, climate. The flowers here are the lark- 
spurs and hollyhocks and roses, the common garden flowers of 
New England. This all changes, however, in the rainy season. 



94 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

Kansas people who are not in a hurry will enjoy a visit to 
Chihuahua, merely as a visit. If they are on business intent, 
and wish to rush things, they had better leave the city and go to 
prospecting. In Chihuahua as far as I have observed no one is 
in a hurry. I have never seen a town with such facilities for 
sitting down. There are seats on the plaza, seats all along the 
Alameda, and stone benches on all the placitas. These are not 
at all necessary for the ordinary Mexican, male or female, for he 
or she takes a seat on the sidewalk whenever repose is required. 
The American out of a job travels incessantly; even the profes- 
sional loafer moves or tramps; but the Mexican, when there is 
nothing urgent on hand, takes a seat. Americans must make up 
their minds to this, and not get excited, since it will effect nothing. 

The people of Chihuahua, as far as my observation goes, and 
as far as I can learn from others, are extremely civil. The rowdy 
and the hoodlum do not seem to be native to Chihuahua. The 
men do not carry knives and daggers, nor do they stick them in 
the backs of Americans, as commonly represented. The vices of 
the Mexican character, of which we hear so much, appear to be 
carefully concealed, as far as strangers are concerned. In a some- 
what extensive acquaintance with public grounds in various cities 
and countries, I have never known a more orderly, perhaps it 
would better to say, courteous place, than the plaza in Chihua- 
hua at night. 

Whether an American can enjoy himself as a mere looker-on 
here, de]iends on his temperament. If he is easy-going, tolerant, 
willing to submit to a state of things diflerent from that existing 
at Jonesville Four Corners, U. S. A ; if he is curious about an 
ancient civiljzation, different from our own; if he wishes to see a 
Southern European city without crossing the ocean, he will find 
it in Chihuahua. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHIHUAHUA. 

The center of Chihuahua is the plaza. There is a ruined por- 
tion of the town called "Old Chihuahua," but it is certain that 
this plaza is as old as anything in the city. It is now, as it al- 
ways has been, the joy and pride of the town, this little square 
of green. In appearance it is somewhat modernized; it was 
originally planted in orange trees, which were killed some years 
ago by the frost, and handsome young ash trees now fill their 
places. There are beds of common garden flowers, larkspurs, 
hollyhocks, petunias, verbenas and the like, trellises covered with 
vines, and in the center there is a bronze fountain, which sup- 
plies the place of an antique stone-work. The aqueduct, a very 
ancient construction, is out of order, yet the bronze swans of the 
fountain pour out little streams from their bills, and keep up a 
continual splashing, and partially fill the basin. From the ear- 
liest light of morning till far into the night a crowd of women 
and girls are coming to or going from the fountain with earthen 
jars, such as you see in pictures of "Rebecca at the Well;" 
there are also porters, who carry away little barrels of water 
slung on a pole between them. Whatever stillness may linger 
around the rest of Chihuahua, it is always busy about the foun- 
tain. There are seats of bronzed iron around the plaza, and 
they are always occupied, day and night. When the sun has set 
the promenade commences. The major part of the promenaders 
are young ladies, sometimes attended by an elderly female; 
oftener alone; very seldom in the company of gentlemen. In 
many a northern city they would be exposed to rudeness. Noth- 
ing of the kind occurs in Chihuahua. I have never seen so uni- 
versally decorous a people. To romp, to talk loud, even in 
innocent glee, is quite unknown ; all questions are exchanged in 
(95) 



96 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

a low voice. To be reposeful and quiet seems to be the Mexican 
idea of good breeding. 

On the plaza, facing the east, is the great church. La Parrochia, 
It has two towers one hundred and fifty feet high. The towers 
are built in four receding stories, of columns of a graceful de 
sign. The facade between the towers is a mass of carving of in 
tricate pattern, and in niches are thirteen life-size figures of saints, 
while on the crest stands the winged Santiago, patron of Spain 
There are entrances on the north and south, each set in a mass of 
carved work. Over the altar is a massive dome, which supplies 
light to the church. In the towers are chimes of bells, and bells 
are hung at every coigne of vantage, and these bells are eternally 
in motion. When the clock strikes the hour, two bells supple- 
ment its information, and about once in fifteen minutes all the 
bells are set going with a deafening clangor. This being the 
month of May, sacred to the Virgin, services are held with un- 
usual frequency. The interior of the church is striking from its 
height and vastness, but for no other reason. The pictures are 
revolting. In no country have I seen the suflTerings of Christ de- 
picted with such brutal fidelity. There are crucifixes in these 
old Mexican churches, where the wounds, the bruises, the rigidity 
of death, the clotted blood, affected me as if I had suddenly dis- 
covered a murdered corse in the woods. The high altar is of 
immense proportions, so that it is ascended by stairs, but it is a 
mass of gilt paper, artificial flowers, and mirrors, of which these 
people of the South appear to be so exceedingly fond. 

Such is the great church of Chihuahua. I have many times 
stepped in while service was in progress, and have noted what 
may be seen in every Spanish- American country — the vast ma- 
jority of women among the worshippers. They knelt or sat upon 
the floor by hundreds, while the men could be counted by scores; 
and many of them left before the service was over. The priest 
of La Parrochia is a marked figure as he goes about the streets 
with a robe of black, with a cape like that of an array over- 
coat. He is a man of wealth aud imperious bearing, and in his 
look reminds me somewhat of the first Napoleon. The same 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHIHUAHUA. 97 

Napoleonic head is seen in the pictures of Morelos, the priest 
who led the Mexican struggle for independence after the death 
of Hidalgo. Down a long, narrow street that leads out of the 
plaza is the Casa de Moneda, or mint, with its tower in which 
Hidalgo was imprisoned. Soldiers are always on guard here, 
and further down are the barracks. There are about one thou- 
sand men in garrison in Chihuahua. These troops are from the 
Gulf coast. The men are much darker than the inhabitants of 
Chihuahua, and in fact many of them are pure Indians. The 
infantry wear a linen jacket and pantaloons, and a round leather 
hat with a red pompon. They are armed with breech-loaders. 
They are drilled entirely with the bugle, and move with reason- 
able steadiness. They are not as robust physically as the Amer- 
icans, English, or Germans, but they are larger than the average 
French infantryman. They live on little, and are said to be 
rapid and far marchers. Well led, they ought to be fair soldiers. 
The cavalry are better clad, wearing a dark-blue uniform, a copy 
of the French, and wide white shoulder belts. Those I have seen 
rode indifferently, perhaps because they were incumbered with 
the iron war club technically called a cavalry saber. The offi- 
cers of both are handsomely uniformed in dark blue, with trim- 
mings of scarlet and silver. Some of these troops have been 
stationed on the frontier, and have acquired so much of the 
English language as is necessary in the transaction of their "reg- 
ular business;" at least one of them has asked me in an intelli- 
gible manner for a dime to buy a drink of whisky. 

In Chihuahua soldiers do not have a monopoly of conspicuous 
clothes. Variety in unity is the Mexican motto. Occasionally 
a gentleman from the country is met whose costume apparently 
consists of a shirt and a pair of drawers; but the general "rig" 
of the lower order of the male persuasion is a pair of pantaloons 
cut off about six inches above the feet, with a white cotton exten- 
sion from there down, a jacket, a sombrero of straw, and around 
the shoulders the serape. This much-talked-of garment is largely 
mauufactured in Chihuahua. It is simply a coarse blanket, and 
looks like a gay-colored piece of rag carpet. The articles known 
in the rural districts of the United States as "galluses" are not 



98 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

in vogue in Mexico, consequently many of the men gird them- 
selves with a white handkerchief, which hangs down in triangular 
shape behind, producing a not very imposing effect. Among the 
poorest people shoes are not worn, but instead sandals of rawhide. 
Mexico is a country of grades, and from these Mexicans in scrapes 
and sandals to the rich rulers of society it is a long way. These 
last, in many instances, are ultra-fashionables in the matter of 
clothes, and the old Mexican dress is seldom worn. Young men 
sometimes wear it when riding on the Alameda. It seems to me 
handsome and graceful. The silver-banded sombrero, the short 
jacket, and the pantaloons trimmed down the seams with gold or 
silver buttons and braid, does not seem theatrical when you see 
it commonly worn. The same may be said of the red or purple 
sash or waist-belt. That bit of color seems the mark of the com- 
mon Latin man the world over. It is worn by French-Canadian 
lumbermen, by Italian and Portugese sailors, and by Mexican 
laborers and herdsmen. 

The grand gathering-place of all the Chihuahua people, old 
and young, is the Alameda, so called, I suppose, from the alamo, 
or Cottonwood. It must originally have extended half around 
the town, from the river to the river again; and Pike speaks of 
the promenade as existing in 1806. Four rows of cottonwoods 
make the Alameda, and many of the trees now standing are over 
one hundred years old. Their gnarled roots run along on top 
of the ground, twining with each other in many a fantastic fold. 
The place of many primeval cottonwoods has been supplied with 
others, and may the shadow of the Alameda never grow less. All 
along either side are stone benches of unknown age, on which 
successive generations of Chihuahuans have rested. Men born 
in a cold climate are prone to dash about in the sun, and risk sun- 
stroke; natives of a hot country never do. Consequently, if you 
would see the Alameda in its glory, you must see it in the early 
morning or later eve. It is a pretty sight in the fresh, cool morn- 
ing to see the crowded Alameda, the ladies seated on the stone 
sofas, watching the carriages as they drive slowly along, or the 
groups of the young bloods of Chihuahua, mounted on fine horses, 
with saddles of the most elaborate pattern. A pendent housing 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHIHUAHUA. 99 

of goat-skiu is veiy fashionable, and is quite showy. All is quiet! 
The carriages move slowly ; the horsemen ride in a measured pace; 
nobody gallops, nobody whoops; the band plays gentle, plaintive 
airs; and the spectators — they just sit still and look idly happy. 

On the Alameda may be seen the beauty of Chihuahua; and 
here is a good place to speak of the question of the existence of 
"the beautiful Sefiorita." Many Americans traveling in New 
Mexico come back swearing that the "beautiful Senorita" is a 
myth. But such would change their minds in Chihuahua. There 
the beautiful Spanish eye and the mass of glossy hair of mid- 
night blackness is the almost universal heritage of the women. 
You may walk the Alameda for a mile and never see a tress of 
brown or gold, or any hue save the blackest of all blacks. There 
is every variety of complexion, though there seems to be a gen- 
eral sameness of feature. There are girls as brown as Arabs, and 
girls whose faces seem like faintly-clouded ivory, and these last 
are blessed with features such as one sees on cameos. The fault — 
and it is a general one — is a lack of expression. The face, at 
church, on the plaza, on the Alameda, everywhere, is the same. 
The large, dark eyes seem watching the world go by, too indiffer- 
ent to kindle with a smile or sparkle with a tear. 

The children under four years old are almost universally 
plump and pretty. I have seen in front of the poorest adobe 
huts in Chihuahua, little half-clad girls playing, whose beauty 
would make them the pride of any Northern household; but 
meagerness and age come early, and with age, among the poorer 
classes, comes hideousness. 

With this last word comes the recollection of the beggars of 
Chihuahua, and yet there is nothing very hideous about them. 
When it is one's business to be miserable it is in order to look as 
miserable as possible, and this the Mexican beggar does. He is 
wrapped up in an absolute overcoat of woe. I liked him much 
better than the truculent, bullying, stand-and-deliver beggar of 
our country. There is a melancholy music in his voice, and he 
is such a Christian, withal. He asks assistance in the name of 
our blessed Lady of Guadaloupe, with the remark that were that 
blessed personage on earth, she herself would help him, but as 



100 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

she is gone he is obliged to ask help of the passing gentleman, 
whose life may God spare to illimitable years. I saw a miser- 
able-looking old man take the proffered handful of copper, raise 
the money to his lips and kiss it; then lift his eyes heavenward 
and murmur a benediction on the giver. It was all acting, 
probably, but it was beautifully done. The well-to-do people are 
kind to the beggars. Saturday is the regular beggars' day, and 
many of the business houses make regular provision, not of 
money, but of food for them. I presume it is from religious sen- 
timent, or that sentiment hardened into custom. 

Gentlemen, ladies, soldiers, countrymen, beggars, and divers 
other persons have been noticed, and we will speak of the streets 
— the scenery, so to speak. 

There is a noticeable absence of life and stir, but this is more 
in appearance than reality. It takes a stranger some time to 
learn that the houses face in, and not out. The court, or placita, 
is the center of household life, and of that you can catch only a 
glimpse from the walk. In Chihuahua the placitas are full of 
flowering plants, in the universal earthen jars, and moreover are 
the homes of countless mocking-birds in gayly-painted wicker 
cages. Going along in the afternoon on the shady side of the 
street, one hears flowing out of the street door, half ajar, a rip- 
pling flood of melody from the cages among the figs and olean- 
ders. It makes you think of Keats's nightingale, "singing of 
summer in full-throated ease." 

When you go to the post office in Chihuahua, you go into a 
placita full of birds and flowers, and come around into a small 
room where there are two or three clerks. It seems like a pri- 
vate office. The clerk looks over a pile of undelivered letters, 
and gives you your own. It is very home-like, but unbusiness-like, 
and will all be changed soon. 

There is little rumbling of wheels in the paved streets. There 
are stages, omnibuses and pleasure carriages, but not the crowd 
of farm wagons one sees in Kansas. Instead, there are certain 
streets devoted to the awfullest-looking carts, with wheels of solid 
wood, drawn by droves of oxen or herds of mules. They hitch 
the beasts on four abreast until the load starts. Everything on 



RECOLLECTIONS OF CHIHUAHUA. . 101 

these carts, whatever the load may be, is duue up in a yucca luat- 
tiug, or in rawhide. Otherwise the rough roads would jolt it to de- 
struction. There are droves of burros loaded with wood, adobes 
and stones for the public building. The milkman goes his rounds 
on a burro. The cans are suspended in a wicker basket on either 
side, and the milkman sits away aft on the animal's back piazza. 
The burro is the great factor in business life in Mexico. If he 
should use his ears for wings and fly away, the country would be 
paralyzed. He is miserably clubbed, and his feed is an illusion, 
but I am inclined to think he likes it. A burro transplanted to 
Kansas to live on full rations, and with nothing to do but carry 
round-legged children about, ought to feel himself in heaven, but 
if you look at him you will see homesickness in his countenance. 
He is longing for somebody to hit him with a rock and swear at 
him in Spanish. 

Signs are not as numerous as with us, but as we have the " Dew 
Drop In" saloon, and the English have the "Bull and Mouth" 
tavern, so the Mexican indulges in the barber shop of " Progress " 
and the grocery store of " The Sun of May." Most charming was 
the candor of a juice vender near the plaza, whose sign announced 
the "Little Hell " saloon. Governor St. John would have thought 
this everlastingly appropriate. 

Such are a few of the sights of Chihuahua; little things, it is 
true, but things that attract the attention of a stranger and linger 
in his memory. Much more might be said in the same vein, par- 
ticularly in regard to the big two-days fiesta and its sights and 
sounds. 

Saying nothing of its commercial importance, in the days when 
the great tide of travel sets into Mexico, Chihuahua will be an 
interesting town to visitors from the North, in the same way that 
Chester is to Americans in England, because it is the first old 
foreign city reached. For that reason I half hope the old place 
will not be utterly " done over " by the " march of improvement." 
I am sure I shall not forget a word of it. The great church with 
its noisy bells, the plaza, the Alameda, the stores where all the 
goods seemed red or yellow, the liquor shops with splendid shelves 
filled with bottles of colored water, the soldiers, the porters with 
7 



102 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

their big loads, the women with their water jars, the children with 
their bare brown shoulders and their Spanish prattle — all these 
I shall remember probably when I have forgotten many more use- 
ful and worthy things; and so, for the present, a truce to further 
recollections. 



SOME FURTHER JOURNEYINGS. 

They said we must eat dinner at twelve sharp, and be at 
the stage office at one o'clock, if we would leave Chihuahua that 
Wednesday afternoon, but I had from two o'clock till three to 
lounge in the stage office, a large and lofty apartment looking 
out on the white glaring street on one side, and into the flower- 
full and shady placita on the other. All the Mexicans of Chi- 
huahua were enjoying their siesta at that hour, but it is not God's 
will that an American shall sleep in the daytime. So I looked 
at the pictures of Lincoln and Washington and Juarez, on the 
wall, and at a little card which announced to the friends of the 
family that the " legitimate child " of So-and-so had been born 
and baptized on the dates given. There were some Spanish 
books on a shelf, school books and others, but they were nearly 
all translations from the French. From France to Spain and 
Spain to Mexico is a long ways round. 

At last the six mules were brought around and hitched to the 
old Concord stage, (I expect there is a line of these old Concord 
coaches running over the Mountains of the Moon,) and by de- 
grees we got started. When we got all our passengers there 
were seven inside — a gentleman, two ladies and a little boy, going 
back to Massachusetts; my friend Matfield (whom may Heaven 
preserve), the writer, and a young man from Durango, a well- 
dressed, pleasant fellow of twenty-five or thereabouts. He was 
quite fair; and Matfield said he belonged to a family of Spanish 
or Mexican Israelites. He was dressed after the American fash- 
ion, and at home I should have taken him for a commercial 
traveler; but he was on his way to see his first locomotive and 
take his first ride on a railroad train. He was the most mercu- 
rial and excitable Mexican I had seen, and his cries and exclama- 
(103j 



104 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

tions when the stage went over a bad place excited great 
amusement among his fellow-passengers, who, being Americans, 
did not care whether they got their necks broken or not, so that 
the stage got through on time. 

At Sacramento we changed mules, and a little Mexican girl 
brought us water to drink. At the ranche of Sauz we stopped, 
after the moon had risen, for supper. I have spoken of the fort- 
like appearance of these ranches in a previous letter. The in- 
terior we found less gloomy than we expected. The large room 
where we took supper was brilliantly lighted with candles, 
(kerosene has not yet begun its work of destruction here,) and 
the table was set by the lady of Sauz herself. She was a widowed 
sister of Gov. Terassas, and as she bustled about the table, she 
reminded me in look and manner of hundreds of elderly house- 
wives I have seen in Vermont. Woodman said she looked like 
his grandmother in Massachusetts. The supper was an excellent 
one, the table being set on the American plan, as the old lady 
understood it, but we had the native Mexican coffee, black and 
strong. 

While the time passed I went into the kitchen and watched a 
woman make tortillas, a thin corn cake flattened out with the 
hands and dried through on a griddle. It was dry and tasteless ; 
it was like chewing a piece of the St. Louis Republican. 

In the dim moonlight we jogged along from the ranche of 
Sauz to that of Encinillas. In these lone night-wrapped Mexi- 
can plains, we talked about the drama and music, and the young 
Bostonian sang in a very pleasant voice, "There was a warrior 
bold," whereat our friend from Durango summoned with one 
tremendous effort his stock of English, clapped his hands and 
bravely cried: "Ver-r-r-ah good." Then there was drowsy 
silence until we reached Encinillas, which is a little town com- 
posed of the people who take care of the thousands of cattle on 
the plains about. There was a long delay, but that was ex- 
pected, and when the appointed hour came we resumed our journey. 
In the United States we should have gone directly to the end 
of the track, but as it was, we passed it and went along the lake 
to a squalid little hamlet called Ojo-Laguna. Here we remained 



SOME FURTHER JOURNEYINGS. 105 

uutil dawu whitened the east, and then Ojo-Laguna, or the quad- 
rupedal portion of it, woke up. The sweet burro who sings 
tenor woke from his slumber in the corral the veteran who sings 
basso prof undo, and various sopranos and contraltos joined in the 
strain, which floated across the waters of the lake and echoed in 
the distant mountains; Mexican curs, fierce and savage, yelped 
as if their hearts would break; dismal "early village cocks" 
tuned their asthmatic pipes; and pigs, reddest and thinnest of 
the porcine tribe, contributed their dulcet squeals. "Matins" 
at Ojo-Laguna will long be remembered. 

Fortunately we moved off before sunrise, and so in stillness 
saw it come. We were in a valley, or what seemed to have been 
the bed of an ancient lake. The mountains seemed to shut it 
in. The mountain-chain on the east cast its shadow on the 
plain as clearly as the disk on the moon when it is in eclipse; 
beyond, the mountains to the west were being lit up, one by one, 
by the candles of the morning. Peak, and pinnacle, and rocky 
wall and deep gorge and shadowy canon, received each in its 
turn its light, now purple, now rosy red, now golden, till the 
work was done; the daily miracle was finished, and it was broad 
and open day. 

By nine o'clock we were flying, at first-class passenger train 
time, for El Paso. The conductor was Al. Duagau, of Atchison, 
the first passenger conductor on the Mexican Central. Mr. D. in- 
quired after the Atchison people, and remarked incidentally that 
he was personally cognizant of the circumstances attending the 
decease of our late lamented townsman, Mr. "Dutch Bill." If 
I correctly remember, this was Mr. Duagan's account of the 
disastrous affair: 

"You see Bill, he turned up in Gunnison, as a 'sure thing' 
man. Well, the marshal and the police they was tryin' to hold 
the town down, and after awhile they ruther got the edge on the 
rustlers, and Bill and his pard flew. After that, about four 
miles from town, I see Bill one day in a corral, and pretty soon 
a man come along on horseback, and asked where he was, and 
in a few minutes I heard a shootin', and when I got there they'd 
got him. They'd bored a hole through his kidneys." 



106 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

El Paso, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, were reached early in 
the afternoon, and the next evening travel was resumed north- 
ward on the good old A. T. & S. F. The evening ride up the 
road was pleasanter than the morning ride down had been, and 
I would beseech my countrymen and countrywomen, journeying 
at evening along the road, to take a look at Las Cruces. Back 
of the town rises, like the curtain of a theater, those cliffs whose 
fluted columned sides and pointed pinnacles of varying heights, 
have given to the range the name of the Organ mountains; at 
their foot jut, like the edge of the stage, the mesa; and then in 
the near foreground is the little town by the river's brim, Las 
Cruces. There are vineyards, acres on acres; there seemed to 
be great spreading apple trees, such as my grandfather planted 
in Vermont; there were great tufted cottonwoods, almost hiding 
the roofs of the town. Across the railroad ran the cause of all 
this — the high-banked acequia, fringed with rushes. 

Certainly no man of sense or observation can travel in these 
countries without acknowledging the value of irrigation. New 
Mexico and much of Old Mexico would be uninhabitable without 
it. I have seen wonderful growth here on red and stony ground 
that a Kansas farmer would pronounce worthless. It is impossi- 
ble to doubt now the basis of reason underlying the Garden City 
experiment in Kansas, undertaken under far more favorable cir- 
cumstances than can exist in New Mexico or Colorado, as far as 
the water supply and the quality of the soil are concerned. But 
while I throw up the sponge on the general issue, I still have my 
doubts as to the results, and for this reason: Irrigation, at best, 
is undertaken in connection with small farming and gardening, 
both of which are an abomination in the eyes of the average 
Western farmer. He is a man of vast ideas, who cannot be 
induced to contemplate small matters. He wants a section or 
nothing. At Garden City I was shown a piece of ground half 
the size of an Atchison town lot, on which $300 worth of onions 
had been raised. But your average farmer I am speaking of — 
from Illinois, Iowa and the big corn States — had sooner lose money 
on 640 acres of wheat than to make money on an acre of onions. 
Gardening of any sort, no matter how profitable, is "running a 



SOME FURTHER JOURNEYINGS. 107 

truck patch" with him, aud he will have none of it. Irrigation, 
too, is a work that is done with one's hands and feet. The water 
must be let into the little beds at a proper time with a hoe. There 
is no machine, nor can there be, to do that sort of work, and the 
wide-out, boundless and preeminently extensive Western farmer 
will not get down to that variety of manual labor. If it were 
possible to invent a four-horse, endless apron, side-draft irrigator, 
adorned with red paint and a chattel mortgage, which would irri- 
gate forty acres a day, then I might have hope that the idea of 
irrigation would be seized upon by our agricultural fellow-citizens 
of Kansas. At present I have no such confidence. The patient 
and industrious Germans, who form a large majority of the market 
gardeners around every American city, may take hold of irrigation 
and make a success of it. I would advise even them to employ 
Mexicans, who can be secured in Colorado. There is no use in try- 
ing to tell what might be made of the banks of the Arkansas were 
they cultivated as are the banks of the Rio Grande. A Las 
Cruces every few miles, where there are now bare, sunburnt ham- 
lets that stick up like a sore thumb, would be a refreshing sight 
indeed. The upper Arkansas Valley might be the garden, the 
orchard, of Colorado, and even Old Mexico, now about to pour 
out such riches as Cortez never dreamed of. 

But we have stopped a long time at Las Cruces, and must 
get on. 

As stated in a former letter, I have had a desire to see before 
leaving this country a sure-enough mine. "Blossom Rock," and 
"indications," and "prospect holes," did not satisfy me. What 
was wanted was a sight of silver ore, of silver itself coming out 
of the ground in quantities at the present time. 

After considerable inquiry I came to the conclusion that the 
best place to visit was the Lake Valley mines, located at the 
little town of Daly, Dona Ana county, New Mexico. I had 
also a melancholy interest in the locality from the fact that my 
poor friend, Lieutenant George Smith, of the Ninth Cavalry, 
was killed by the Indians not far from the place. 

I left the north-bound train at Rincou, stayed there till morn- 
ing, and then took the down-train for Nutt station, twenty-one 



108 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

miles from Rincon, and twelve from the mines. A stage 
took me over the open prairie rising to the foot-hills of the Black 
Range, in the very edge of which the mines are located. We 
climbed no rocks, passed through no canons. It was easier than 
driving from Atchison to Nortonville. There is a little triangu- 
lar opening in the smooth hills, which are dotted with soap- 
weed, and here is the new stamp mill and the office of the super- 
intendent, and the hotel and the several shops and stores that 
make up the little town of Daly; and on the lower edge of one 
of the hills, three hundred yards from the stamp mill, were the 
mines. Had I not known to the contrary, I should have sup- 
posed that they were getting out the dark sandstone, such as you 
find along the Solomon valley at Minneapolis; or perhaps I 
might have taken it for iron ore. It was in reality silver ore. 
They were digging and blasting it out, just as they do the Sixth- 
street bluff at Atchison, with the difference that when a blast 
went off it lifted from $3,000 to $6,000 into the air. I had no 
letters of introduction, and the bare statement of my occupation 
in life relieved any suspicion that I wished to purchase a mine 
or mines. In the absence of Mr. D. H. Jackson, the superiu- 
tendent, Mr. Gibson, the book-keeper, went about with me. The 
lower edge of the hillside was cut up with trenches and holes. 
Along the trenches was piled up the ore. The ore could not 
have been put back into the trenches again. Limestone bulk- 
heads had been built up, and on these was ore regularly corded up 
as if for measurement. The finest ore had been sorted over and 
put in sacks. I was told that a chunk of this XXX, which I 
would carelessly have thrown at a dog, was worth from $3 to $5. 
There it was, dug from the surface to a depth of six or eight 
feet, cords on cords of it, running from hundreds to thousands of 
dollars to the ton. It was dug as easily and cheaply as so much 
limestone, cheaper than coal, and yet it was silver. 

Mr. Gibson went back to his books, and I went down to the 
stamp mill and talked to Mr. Town, the builder. He looked 
like Colonel Towne, of the Fort Scott & Gulf, and may have 
been a relative of that wonderful mechanical family. The mill, 
to be in operation about June 15, cost $100,000. Every stick in 



SOME FURTHER JOURNEYINGS. 109' 

it came from Puget's Sound, 1,600 miles by vvateraud 1,300 miles 
b}' rail. One piece of timber contained 1,100 feet of lumber. 
The mill was a twenty-stamp, running two sets of stamps, etc., 
so as to work two different lots of ore at the same time. Mr. 
Town explained the amalgamation process as 1 had heard it at 
Socorro, but giving many details, however, which would not in- 
terest the reader. I was, however, more interested in ISIr. Town 
than anything else. He had been working about mines for thirty 
years, and his hands were bitten to pieces by quicksilver. I never 
realized before what a colossal business this gold and silver min- 
ing is. He chalked out on the floor the great porphyry ledge on 
which the Corastock is located. He told me how many millions 
had been taken out of this mine, and here, right alongside, mil- 
lions of dollars had been sunk in the rock, and not an ounce of 
ore had been found. He told me of the enormous cost of it. At 
one mine a cylinder weighing twenty-six tons had been dragged up 
over a railroad constructed for the purpose. Building the pyra- 
mids was a child's play compared with it. He told me that this 
twenty-stamp mill at Daly, though so large, was but an aver- 
age; that there was a mill in the Black Hills that ran one hun- 
dred stamps. Then he told me of men working 3,600 feet 
under ground; of places so hot that a man ran through them as 
through a prairie fire; where a drop of water .falling on the skin 
blistered it. Ah, this silver quarter that we toss to the butcher 
or to the baker: how much thought and energy and skill and 
labor and suffering it takes to wring it from the earth! 

After dinner, Mr. Jackson having returned, we visited the un- 
derground works. By this time quite a party had collected. In 
one new-comer I recognized a transient Topeka acquaintance of 
years ago. He had been living for years in Georgetown, and 
knew all about mines. We went down into the "Bridal Cham- 
ber." It is perhaps fifty feet from the surface, and shut off from 
the shaft by a door. Eight or ten men can stand in the excava- 
tion. A candle held to the walls reveals millions of shining par- 
ticles. It looks like a mass of earth, half-decayed sandstone, and 
here and there masses of ore that can be cut with a knife. This 
last is horn silver. From this place specimens have been assayed 



110 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

running $29,000 to the ton. All around is ore that will run 
$10,000 to the ton. A ton can be broken down with four or five 
blows with a pick. A man could scrape up a fortune with his 
bare hands. 

We went through galleries, and looked at piles of ore until we 
were tired. Then we went to the office and looked at a little brick 
weighing eight and a half ounces, taken from two pounds of ore. 

This is all. I am no mining expert, and have no interest in 
the ups and downs of mines, but I will venture the statement 
that last Saturday I saw the richest silver mine in the United 
States. There are four mining companies with claims at Daly — 
the Sierra Grande, the Sierra Bella, the Sierra Rica, and the Sierra 
Apache. 



MEXICO AND RAILROADS. 



As a man may live in ignorance of the real nature and charac- 
ter of his own wife and children, so we of the United States have 
long been in darkness concerning everything pertaining to Mex- 
ico and the Mexicans. It is quite certain that more books about 
Mexico have been published in France than in the United States, 
and in a commercial point of view the influence of France and 
England has been vastly greater than that of our country. In 
the markets of Chihuahua to-day French and English goods are 
sold under our very noses — goods which we claim to manufac- 
ture cheaper and better than anybody else. I saw at El Paso del 
Norte, not only foreign rails being laid down, but cross-pieces and 
insulators for telegraph poles imported from England. 

Totheaverage ill-informed American, a Mexican is a"Greaser," 
a low-bred, infamous creature, without manners or morals; lazy, 
cowardly, treacherous and ignorant. The men have been uni- 
formly represented as without honor, and the women without 
virtue. Mexico has been represented as an utterly priest-ridden 
country, and not in any sense a Christian country. Bishop Haven 
was fond of saying that the human sacrifices of the Aztecs gave 
way to the "religion of Cortez," and that the Christian religion 
was unknown in Mexico until it was introduced by some soldiers 
of the American army under Gen. Scott. 

I suppose it is possible for an American to live twenty-five 
years in Mexico and retain all these prejudices. Judge King- 
man, in his lecture "Across the Continent on a Buckboard," 
spoke of the style of American who lives in New Mexico for 
twenty-five or thirty years, absorbs all the native vices in addi- 
tion to those he imported with him, but to the last declares that 
(111) 



112 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

he is an American, and trusts that God may burn him in perdi- 
tion if he is not also a Protestant. 

For myself, I am not conscious of entertaining many prejudices 
at the most, and of those, few which will not yield to reason and 
evidence; and, beside, to me the most offensive feature of our 
national character — and we get it from the English — is the 
habit of considering every people who do not conform to our 
standard in dress, manners, government and religion as heathen 
and the scum of the earth. 

Divesting himself of such feelings, if he entertain them, and 
the American finds that Mexico is a great country, with numer- 
ous natural resources, inhabited by a people very different, it is 
true, from the people of the United States, yet a people proud of 
and attached to their country; proud of its independence, and 
teaching their children the history of the struggle by which that 
independence was achieved. He will find a people governed by 
a certain social code, and extremely tenacious in regard to its 
observance; as much so as the French or any European people. 
He will find a people who, while adhering to their ancient relig- 
ion, have yet deprived the church of its power as a political 
organization ; who have remanded the priest to the altar, where 
he belongs, and, more than any other Spanish-American country, 
have effected the secularization of education. This last step, 
the absolute elimination of the church as a political factor, has 
brought about what Mexico has long needed — the destruction 
of the idea of imperialism, revived once and again by Iturbide 
and by Maximilian. I do not say that any form of religion is 
incompatible with republicanism, but I do say that universal 
secular education is necessary to its existence. This point Mex- 
ico is steadily approaching. There are ten public schools in 
Chihuahua, and in the city council room of Chihuahua may be 
seen a piece of embroidery, a testimonial from the children of 
the city schools to the city government. The Governor of the 
State of Guanajuato has i-ecently submitted a bill to the Legis- 
lature providing for compulsory education. A knowledge of 
reading and writing is much more commonly diffused among the 
common people of Mexico than is generally supposed by foreign- 



MEXICO AND EAILROADS. 113 

ers, aud I have noticed that Mexicans usually write a hand 
remarkable for beauty and legibility. 

With the settlement of the imperial and clerical questions has 
come a settled government and the reign of law under the rule 
of General Porfirio Diaz and his successor, General Gonzalez. 
Courts exist everywhere in Mexico, the system being somewhat 
like our own, save that in the courts above that of the justice of 
the peace the proceedings are all in writing. I have seen the 
reports of the Supreme Court of the Republic advertised for 
sale, as the reports of the State Supreme Courts are sold in the 
United States. 

It will thus be seen that the idea that Mexico is a country 
without laws, without order, and with an utterly barbarous, ig- 
norant and vicious population, is erroneous. 

The progress of the country has been made clearer to my mind 
by looking over the volumes containing the text of the conces- 
sions under which the construction of the Mexican Central Rail- 
road has been undertaken. The volume makes, in Spanish and 
English, two hundred pages. An intelligent American gentle- 
man of Chihuahua said to me that the Congress of the United 
States could learn a great deal from the careful course pursued 
by the Mexican government in its dealings with corporations. 
In the pages before me, the government pledges itself to aid the 
construction of a great railway system, extending the length and 
breadth of the Republic ; more strictly speaking, from the city of 
Mexico to El Paso del Norte, a distance of 1,300 miles, with 
transverse lines running from Tampico to San Bias, and connect- 
ing the Gulf and the Pacific. It pledges to this great enterprise 
a subsidy of §14,500 a mile, exempts the road from taxation 
for fifteen years, admits all material for its construction free of 
duty, and provides that six per cent, of the customs revenue 
of the country shall be devoted to the payment of the subsidy. 
On the other hand, the interest of the people is carefully looked 
after; the passenger and freight tarifl^ is fixed; the former in no 
case to exceed five cents a mile for first-class passage, with second 
and third-rate fares to correspond. Every detail in regard to 
damages to private and public property is looked after. The 



114 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

method of construction must be such as the government approves • 
and in the event that the railroad company does not comply in 
every respect with the letter and spirit of the contract, then the 
road is declared forfeited, and the road may be taken by the 
government and the contract re-let to the same or other parties, 
since the Mexican government does not propose to become in any 
event a builder of railroads. It seems to me that in these con- 
cessions there is displayed genuine and far-seeing statesmanship; 
and yet the statesmen who drew up the conditions were Mexicans 
born and bred. 

It seems a little singular that after capitalists and adventurers 
of every nation, French, Spanish and English, have had the first 
chance in Mexico for years, that this concession should at last be 
obtained by a company of New-Euglauders, headed officially by 
an ex-Cape Cod sea captain. Such is the case, however. The 
men into whose hands the railroad system of Mexico has been 
committed are those whose names are familiar in Kansas, from 
the fact that they are painted on the locomotives of the Atchison, 
Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. 

The value of the concession (which includes several former 
minor grants) is incalculable. There can never be another great 
railroad in Mexico. By the terms of the concession no compet- 
ing line can be built within twenty leagues. The line runs along 
the high table-land, the backbone, as it were, of Mexico, and 
there is no room for any other. By the terms of the concession 
the road must reach, directly or by branch, the capital of every 
State between El Paso and the city of Mexico. It thus reaches 
every important point. Chihuahua is one of the smallest in 
point of population of the Mexican State capitals. Zacatecas 
was described to me as " eight times as large as Chihuahua and 
a hundred times as rich," and there are larger and richer cities 
than Zacatecas. 

The road runs through two zones, or from the temperate to 
the confines of the torrid zone. It runs through cotton, cocoa, 
coffee and sugar fields, and through a country full of mines which 
have yielded their unexhausted treasures for three centuries. It 
is the most romantic enterprise that a lot of practical Yankees 



MEXICO AND RAILROADS, 115 

ever took hold of, I believe it is the great railroad boom of the 
immediate future, and \ expect a Kansas exodus will follow its 
construction. I expect that within two years the mails will be 
burdened with letters addressed to "formerly of Kansas" men, 
residing in Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Aguas Caliente,. 
Guadalajara, and other Mexican cities. 

Some very well posted people have asserted that the road will 
never do a passenger business. Such persons do not understand the 
Mexican temperament. The Mexican is a social being; he likes 
to go about and visit his friends. He is fond of traveling. In 
the New-Mexican towns where street railways have been built, 
he is their constant patron. When the new world of the North 
is open to him, he will not fail to go and see it. The wealthy 
Mexican travels as a luxury. Many of the higher classes of 
Mexicans visit Europe, and many Mexican gentlemen have been 
educated abroad. This class of travelers will constantly enlarge. 

The influence of the railroad is seen the moment one crosses 
the line and enters El Paso del Norte. Here a Kansas man, 
ex-Governor Anthony, with several Kansas associates, has been 
at work, and has built the first railroad town in Mexico. 
There is a yard of fifty-seven acres, numerous tracks and turn- 
tables, shops, store-houses, freight-houses, and now a new depot. 
The American has sensibly adopted in this building the Mexi- 
can adobe, but he makes the adobes with machinery of his own, 
turning them out ten times as fast as under the Mexican plan. El 
Paso is now to the Mexican Central what Topeka is to the A, T. 
& S. F. Hundreds of Mexican laborers are employed. They 
get wages such as they never dreamed of before, fill up with 
American "grub" at the railroad boarding-house, and are trans- 
formed internally and externally. These men will never again 
follow the banner of any revolutionary chief. They will take 
no heed of pronunciamentos if they are issued. They will at- 
tend to their regular business. It is a pleasure to know that in 
this great enterprise a fellow-citizen of ours has borne a promi- 
nent part. Ex-Governor Anthony was early on the ground, has 
encountered and overcome a mountain of prejudice on the part 
of the local Mexican authorities; has worked day and night, 
attending to every detail, and will soon have the satisfaction of 



116 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

riding into Chihuahua over a first-class road, over which trains 
have been already run at the rate of forty miles an hour. 

I think one secret of Governor Anthony's success betrays itself 
in the kindly and interested tone in which he spoke of the Mexi- 
can people. He had much to say of their law-abiding and 
peaceful character. In fact, he has a theory that the troubles of 
Mexico have resulted, not from a lawless disposition on the part 
of the common people, but from their devotion to those whom 
they have been accustomed to regard as their lawful and legiti- 
mate leaders. Naturally adverse to fighting, they will yet follow 
those to whom they have beeu accustomed to look for orders to 
the last gasp. With the spread of education this distinction of 
leaders and led will cease in Mexico, at least in its present form. 

By the terms of the law, the Mexican Central is a Mexican 
enterprise. All its oflScers and employes are, in law, Mexicans. 
They have no recourse to any foreign power or potentate. In 
accepting the subsidy and other aid they consent to conduct their 
enterprise under the laws of Mexico, and no other. This seems 
to me just, and it will be an interesting study to watch Mexico 
work out her own salvation through the railroad. 

As I have said, I look upon Mexico as the great opening field 
of enterprise, and I expect that many Kansans will try their 
fortunes therein. To such I would say, that they will do well to 
drop on the frontier the most of their preconceived notions about 
Mexico and the Mexicans; to be prepared to respect the preju- 
dices and feelings of the people ; and to avoid, not only rowdyism 
as a matter of course, but that lofty superciliousness and loud 
and intolerable bumptiousness which makes so many traveling 
Englishmen and Americans utterly detested in foreign parts. 
People who cannot like anybody but themselves, or any country 
except their own, had better stay at home. To an American of 
a kindly, tolerant and forbearing spirit, willing to put up with 
unavoidable inconveniences — in short, to an American gentle- 
man, Mexico will prove a most interesting country, and should 
certainly be visited, especially now that the country is soon to be 
opened up in its length and breadth by a great railroad, the re- 
sult of American enterprise, and, it is but just to add, of Mexi- 
can liberality and public spirit. 



OUT ON THE ATLANTIC & PACIFIC. 

At Albuquerque I struck a new railroad, the Atlantic c^' Pacific. 
There is more of it back east, but the connection is lost somewhere 
in the Indian Territory, and is taken up again at Albuquerque. 
It starts at that town and pushes out into the Western wilds — a 
veritable Christopher Columbus of a railroad. 

At Albuquerque the road has built fine shops and offices, and 
has about three hundred people employed. It has done much to 
operate the Albuquerque boom, which I regard as about the most 
genuine in New Mexico. 

Other railroads are built to reach certain way points, as well 
as to connect certain terminals; but the Atlantic & Pacific starts 
out to the mountains, canons, deserts, sage-brush, Indians and 
"rustlers" with an eye single to going to California. There was 
not a "laid-out" town on its route when it was projected, nor do 
I believe that there ever would have been a town had the road 
not been built. As it is, the road has started out carrying its 
own wood, water and provisions, and has reached the Canon 
Diablo, which means the Devil's Own Canon, a matter of three 
hundred miles from Albuquerque. 

The reason this otherwise unaccountable railroad has been built, 
is because its engineers have found a place where the Rocky Moun- 
tains have simply played out; there is a gap in the great mountain 
fence, and through this opening the road has been run. There 
is, properly speaking, no pass, no defile, no canon — only a place 
where there seems to be no mountain. The track, with at the most 
■a grade of 58 feet to the mile, climbs the Continental Divide, and 
then goes down at the same rate, and the road to the Pacific is 
open. This is the reason the Atlantic & Pacific has been built. 

The discovery of this route is associated with the name of 
8 (117) 



118 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

Wingate. There is au old abandoned Fort Wingate near the 
line, and also a new Fort Wingate; but who Wingate was, no_ 
body along the road appeared to know. 

The west-bound passenger on the Atlantic & Pacific leaves 
Albuquerque at half-past nine o'clock at night, connecting with 
the Santa Fe train from the north. The night of my departure 
the cars were crowded, and every man had a roll of blankets 
and a gun. 

Morning, or rather, breakfast, found us at Coolidge, until 
lately known to all the country round as " Crane's ranche," (of 
which "more anon,") and then came Fort Wingate— the new 
one — the fort itself being situated at the foot of a line of pine- 
covered hills, in sight of, but some three miles from the track. 
Fort Wingate passed, the stations consisted of the station house 
and the name. 

By the dawn's early light you begin to notice Indians. The 
Atlantic & Pacific is the great and only Indian route. It is the 
only railroad by which you can reach Mr. Cushing's[Zunis, like- 
wise the Accomas, also the Navajos, also the Apaches. It 
makes a connection with the Moquis, and will soon give transit 
facilities to the clothesless Mojaves. If you want to see "In- 
juns," take the Atlantic & Pacific. The Zunis just now are at- 
tracting tourists and investigators on account of their advertising 
trip under the management of Mr. Gushing, who has found out 
more about them than they ever suspected themselves. Major 
Dane, who rejoined me at Albuquerque, paid them a visit. They 
seem to be much like other Pueblo Indians; they weave woolen 
goods like the Navajoes, raise peaches, grind corn with a couple 
of rocks, and eat mutton with the wool on. These seem to be 
the principal features of Zuni life. They are much attached to 
Mr. Gushing, whom they have elected register of deeds, county 
commissioner, or something of the kind. They were awaiting 
his return to assist in tying up bunches of feathers and getting 
ready for some grand and intensely-interesting ceremonies. The 
Accomas seem to have more practical sense than the Zunis. 
Major Dane and a traveling companion having incautiously used 
the word "Washington" in the Accoma country, were promptly 



OUT ON THE ATLANTIC & PACIFIC, IW 

put in arrest until the Indians could ascertain whether any new 
swindle was contemplated. The Major having convinced the 
Accomas that he did not live in Washington, and had no con- 
nection with the Interior Department, he was allowed to depart 
in safety. 

The Indians seen along the Alantic & Pacific are mostly Nav- 
ajos. They may be seen lounging around the stations, or work- 
ing along the railroad grade. Their droves of piebald horses 
and flocks of sheep and goats are seen at frequent intervals. The 
Indians herd their sheep and goats together, on account of the 
superior courage of the goats. When the sheep get frightened, 
and ready to run, and are in the state of mind peculiar to a 
Kansas legislator when he pipes out, " Mr. Speaker, I desire to 
change my vote," the goats stand still with their heads up and 
investigate the approaching object, and so encourage the sheep to 
follow their example. Thus is courage infectious even among 
brutes. 

The Navajos appear friendly to the railroad, and as yet have 
not organized an anti-monopoly party. In compliment to the 
tribe the railroad have named a station Manuelito, after the head 
chief of the Navajos. As the Navajos own a million sheep, their 
wool export is a matter of importance. 

The landscape from Coolidge to Defiance presents little change. 
On one side runs a line of forest-covered hills or mountains. On 
the other side stretches an almost unbroken perpendicular wall 
of red sandstone, crowned with trees; at Coolidge this wall is 
four or five miles from the track, at other points it is within a 
few rods. It is worn by the wind and the rain into fantastic 
shapes. At some points the wall is pierced by numerous holes 
as if worn by the action of gravel and water, like the "pot- 
holes" seen in the rocky beds of rivers. Between the sandstone 
bluffs and the wooded hills is a valley, or plateau, varying in 
width; and in many places white with a flower that lies on the 
surface like snow-flakes. It fades quickly, and is called the 
"phantom flower," The valley everywhere looks barren, bu- 
the flocks and herds seemed in good condition. There are nut 
merous springs in the foot-hills, and a particularly fine one at 
Fort Wingate. 



120 . SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

At the Hue of New Mexico and Arizona, which is marked by 
a post, the abomination of desolation commences. The red sand- 
stone changes to gray, and finally recedes on either hand into the 
blue distance, leaving a wide plain, broken here and there by 
piles of rock, which look like great masses of slag from a fur- 
nace. The surface, patched here and there with sage-brush, looks 
like an old dried buffalo hide. A dry river, the Rio Puerco, winds 
through the sandy solitude. In the rainy season this sandy, 
gravelly bed is suddenly filled with a rushing, roaring torrent, 
which tears everything to pieces. The railroad people were 
erecting barriers of plank and stone, and building levees and 
changing the bed of the stream, to avoid the possible and prob- 
able washouts. For miles not a tree was to be seen. It seemed 
like the bed of a dried sea, and here and there a long, low ledge 
of rocks looked like the hulk of some great ship, left stranded 
by the subsiding waters. The wind moaned and shrieked over 
the wilderness, catching up the sand in high, whirling columns, 
which sped across the line of vision, and then dissolved, sand to 
sand. Rocks, dead rivers, sand cyclones, and the fierce, unpity- 
ing sun — this was the scene. A running stream was reached at 
last, the Little Colorado. There, in an immensely wide, gravelly 
bed, runs a narrow flow of water. At Holbrook some cotton- 
woods were growing. At St. Joseph the Mormons have a set- 
tlement, and their little colonies are scattered along the Little 
■Colorado. A well-dressed and intelligent young man rode some 
distance on the train, whom I understood afterward was a Mor- 
mon storekeeper or commissary. Although the condition of the 
Mormons in Arizona had been discussed in his presence, he had 
not mentioned or suggested his connection with the multi-marry- 
ing people. I imagine polygamy does not flourish greatly among 
the sage brush of the Little Colorado and Rio Puerco country. 
A harem in Turkey may be a romantic idea; but there is nothing 
particularly gorgeous in the Mormon reality — four or five hag- 
gard, angular, sun-bonneted, sandy-colored old girls, browsing 
around among the greasewood and cactus, and "dobes" and 
brush corrals of a desert. The spectacle of an old Mormon 
striking out on his burro through the sand by the wan moon- 



OUT OX THE ATLANTIC & PACIFIC. 121 

light to the music of the coyotes' miduight choir to woo aud wiu 
his fifteenth bride, will never inspire another Moore to write an- 
other Lalla Rookh. 

Winslow, Arizona, was reached for supper, and a nicely-served 
meal it was. The town stands in a dead flat plain. In the dis- 
tance are scattered peaks, remains of some former mountain 
chain. Even the purple twilight did not redeem their weird bar- 
renness. They seemed to mark the confines of a lone land, tra- 
versed by no human foot, where only devils roam and satyrs cry. 
But turning from these scorched and splintered ruins of a lost 
world, there ran directly in front, outlined against the saflJ'ron 
sky, the most kindly, human, symmetrical mountain I have seen 
in all my wanderings in these southern regions. It is the Fran- 
cisco or San Francisco mountain, forty miles beyond the Canon 
Diablo, and directly in the path of the oncoming railroad. Its 
sides were dark with forest, its top was streaked with snow. It 
rose in gentle slopes to a long, wavy crest, and one could imagine 
the voice of waterfalls and the curling smoke from the homes of 
men about its feet. I saw it at sunset, by moonlight, and again 
at sunrise, and it was ever the same gentle and yet majestic pres- 
ence. From its summit, it is said, you can make out the windings 
of the Grand Canon of the Colorado. 

Canon Diablo, the present end of the Atlantic & Pacific track, 
was the last station reached. The canon is half a mile beyond 
the little town of tents, houses, shanties and box cars, and I saw 
it by moonlight. The word canon usually brings up the idea of 
a rift through a high mountain or a narrow passage between two 
mountains, but there is no mountain here — it is just a tremen- 
dous fissure in the level plain. You might ride your horse into 
it in the dark without the least warning of its existence. It may 
have been rent by an earthquake, perhaps worn by the action of 
water. I should incline to the former opinion. It has shelving 
sides composed of masses of rocks, is at the bridge two hundred 
and thirty feet deep, and is spanned by a bridge five hundred and 
forty feet long. At the bottom the canon seems the width of an 
ordinary wagon-road, aud there can be discerned, like winding 
threads, the track laid down by the bridge-builders to aid in 



122 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

their work. The moon shone brightly, yet the view was broken 
by deep masses of shadow in the depths below. It was strange 
to look down from the bridge, which reached to the middle of 
the chasm, and realize that the great church of Chihuahua might 
stand down there, and yet you might look down one hundred feet 
on the glossy backs of the swallows that flit around its topmost 
spire. Canon Diablo, the Mexicans called it, a devilish obstruc- 
tion to their journeyings, causing them a detour of many miles, 
but it is no obstruction now. A few hours after I left, the heavy 
iron spans were swung as lightly to their places as a Mexican 
woman lifts the earthen jar of water to the shoulder at the 
fountain; and by the time these lines are read in Kansas the 
busy locomotive will be running on its errands to and fro. 

After a comfortable night at Caiion Diablo station, the 
"chamber that opened to the sunrise" being a box car, a last 
look was taken at the great mountain which stands a sentinel at 
the gateway of the Pacific coast, and the backwax'd journey was 
begun. It was a welcome moment when the train passed out of 
the plain and the road was winding about again in the sandstone 
defiles. It is only when one has traversed the desert, that he 
realizes the beauty and force of the old oriental simile, "the 
shadow of a great rock in a weary land." 

At Coolidge the hospitality of Mr. R. M. Bacheller, formerly 
of Emporia, the station agent, acting division superintendent and 
man-of all- work of the Atlantic & Pacific, was enjoyed, and a 
night was passed in the late home of the "rustlers." Coolidge, 
the outgrowth of " Crane's ranche," has had a stirring history. 
The American frontier "wolf," beside whom a common Apache 
is a scholar, gentleman and Christian, for some time "held high 
wassail" as Major John N. Edwards would say, in that locality. 
"Hold-ups" were a daily and nightly occurrence. To simple 
robbery the more peaceable citizens submitted for awhile, but 
when to robbery, brutal violence was added, a general fight took 
place. At the conclusion of the exercises three of the outlaws 
and two of the citizens lay dead on the snow. There has been 
no general killing since, and Coolidge is at peace with "all the 
world and the rest of mankind." On the beautiful moonlight 



OUT ON THE ATLANTIC & PACIFIC. 123 

night of ray stay, the crowd that gathered in at "Hall's," (Hall 
being the alcalde and "Bascora" of the place,) though "bearded 
like the pard" and profusely ornamented with cartridge belts and 
*'guns" of various calibers, were on peaceful thoughts intent. 
The talk was of home, of the long-gone hours we once enjoyed 
with the brethren in the grand lodge of the Sons of Malta, and 
other edifying subjects. The town presented a perfect picture of 
quiet and repose. The burghers lay on the counter and sat on the 
mackerel kits in Hall's store; the gamblers listlessly regarded 
very small piles of chips, and the female terror of the Far West, 
the "Apache Sal" or "Broncho Kate," of the place, sauntered 
about in slatternly ease with her cigar, but seemed thoughtful, 
pensive, almost sad, and -failed to bestow on her gentleman ac- 
quaintances the usual quantity of deteriorated language. A few 
Indians, poor Navajoes whose untutored minds were intent on 
stealing something, flitted about in the moonlight wrapped in 
their blankets. A few revolver shots were heard occasionally, 
but they were fired at random and not on business. It was evi- 
dent that over Coolidge hung the shadow of impending reform. 
The Eastern novelist in search of material for a gory and ghastly 
tale of the bloody canon or the ghost-haunted gulch, will no longer 
find material at Coolidge or "Crane's ranche." So runs the 
world away. 

Through the kindness of Superintendent Angell, the rest of 
the return trip over the first division to Albuquerque was made 
by daylight, and the journey was made pleasant by the society 
of himself. Chief Engineer Kingman and Assistant Engineer 
Billings. The great attractions to a stranger and curiosity- 
seeker are the lava-beds, of which there are two. The volcano 
from which one of these rivers flowed is plainly visible near 
Blue Water station. The lava-bed itself has been partially cov- 
ered by sand and debris and vegetation, its course being traced 
by huge black and ragged masses here and there, but at Grant 
station the lava may be seen as perfect as on the slopes of Vesu- 
vius. It runs, or did run, a huge stream, twenty-five miles long, 
and from three to five miles wide. The railroad runs along the 
verge, where its course was finally stayed. It is as if from its 



124 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

boiling reservoir a tide of melted asphalt, teu feet high, had 
swept down the valley, spreading out in fan shape as it came. 
As it flowed it cooled and cracked, and tossed and surged, like 
the waves of the sea. The burning foam hardened; the furrows 
and crests of the waves took solid shape, and now it is a black, 
petrified river. Bottomless fissures cross it in every direction ; 
ragged points, as hard as iron and sharp as glass, cover the sur- 
face. For the most part it is impassable by man or beast. 
Occasionally, however, there is a long wave, smooth, rounded, 
and black, looking for all the world like a whale. Along the 
edges of the bed grew shrubs and bushes, which looked brighter 
than vegetation elsewhere. I have been told that the lava yields 
in time to the action of the elements, and that green grass grows 
where once the molten lava hissed and flamed, but of this I can- 
not speak from observation. There is nothing else in nature 
like a lava-bed, and the traveler over the Atlantic & Pacific can 
see this evidence of earth's mighty convulsions without getting 
out of the car. In fact, the lava is only a few feet distant. 

Another sight an the first division of the Atlantic & Pacific 
is the Indian village of Laguna. The pueblo is like all others — a 
series of "dobes," running tier upon tier on the slope of a bare 
rock. Many of the houses were in ruins. In former days, when 
the Pueblos were harassed by the Navajos and other wild tribes, 
they kept within their works, but now that the pressure is re- 
moved, they distribute themselves along the banks of the river 
that irrigates their little fields, and build separate habitations. 

Of course the conversation turned to a considerable extent on 
the resources of the country and the future of the road. The 
region, sterile as it looks, is yet a stock country of considerable 
value. 

The mineral resorces of Arizona are undoubtedly great; but it 
seems to me that the great value of the Atlantic & Pacific lies in 
its possession of the wonderful pass through or over the Conti- 
nental Divide and its consequently easy grades. It will be the 
through freight line, if my judgment in such matters is worth 
anything. 

The tourist will travel this road in after years because it does 



OUT ON THE ATLANTIC & PACIFIC. 125 

traverse in its course a desert. The desert has its attractiveness; 
it exercises an indescribable but powerful charm. Thousands 
have felt it, and the desolate waste will forever woo men to its 
burning breast. In a short time the road will be within easy 
staging or horseback distance of the Grand Canon of Colorado, 
a wonder in its way, like Niagara. Men tired of trim parks and 
placid lakes, and vapid watering-places, will find in these un- 
tamable wilds something to stir the blood and linger in the heart. 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 



Cbtzi^^K^Jn^y /M'2- 



No MATTER how Carefully we plau a jouruey beforehand, or 
how methodically we measure in advance its days, there comes a 
time when it may be said to end itself; when we cease to look 
forward and begin to look back over the route we have come; 
when we think not of the land whither we are going, but of the 
land from whence we came. The traveler, when this period 
comes, in spite of himself, had better, if he can, go home. Fur- 
ther journeying is a weariness, a twice-told tale. 

After returning from the visit to the Canon Diablo, and the 
confines of Arizona, the writer felt that he was "homeward 
bound," and the little that remains to be told is the hurried rec- 
ord of a journey often filled, it must be confessed, with thoughts 
that had nothing to do with present surroundings, and oft-times 
completely obliterating them. 

From Albuquerque to Santa Fe is, to the readers of these 
letters, old ground. The return journey was performed entirely 
by daylight. It was breakfast instead of supper at Wallace; it 
was noon instead of evening at Santa Fe, but nothing of inci- 
dent befel, Santa Fe was found even quieter than it had been 
left, for Governor Sheldon had gone to the southern part of the 
Territory and taken his good stories with him. The stage for 
Espanola did not start till next morning, and there was a long 
half-day to lounge about the plaza and sit under the portal of 
the Governor's palace, and talk to the old man Ellison and Mr. 
O'Neil, of the old Santa Fe. The ghost of what the " regulars" 
call the "Old Army" walked in the talk of these elderly gen- 
tlemen. It was curious to hear them speak of captains and 
lieutenants of whom I had never heard, except as generals. 
One of these vanished martial figures was Bernard E. Bee. He 
was killed, a Confederate general, at the first Bull Run. He 
(126) 



HOMEAVARD BOUND. 127 

was the greatest military dandy, they said, that Santa Fe had 
ever known ; more precise even than Sykes, our General Sykes, 
who died iu harness in 1881. 

The Espauola stage drove around to the Exchange at 7 o'clock 
in the morning. It was full of men, young fellows who had 
been mining and prospecting in various regions, and were going 
over to the San Juan country to try their luck. They carried 
guns and wore miners' garments ; hence it was, it is presumed, 
that a drummer with plaid clothes, and a big stomach like a 
sample trunk, surveying the party from the steps of the Palace 
Hotel (terms $4 a day, charged to the "house,") said he 
"wouldn't ride with that crowd," and remained over to the next 
stage. Nevertheless I found the men very fair company; close 
observers of all they had seen, and acute in their judgments of 
men and events. One of the men gave the most graphic ac- 
count I ever heard of the great railroad riot at Pittsburgh. 

The twenty-two miles of stage-road between Santa Fe and 
Espanola is what John Bunyan would have called "doleful." It 
is sand and rock, piled up in ridges, endwise, crosswise, perpen- 
diewlarly, every way — a rolling, pitching desert. There were 
water and trees at a few places where they change horses, but it 
is desolation for the most part The consolation of the traveler 
is "looking to the mountains from whence cometh help." The 
great range which runs from Santa Fe to Taos looks down on it 
all, and gives a sense of protection. 

But one town is passed on this road, the village of Santa Cruz, 
on a little river of the name, which rushes cold and swift from 
the mountains to join the Rio Grande. The largest building is 
the old church; the largest residence is that of the priest; and 
the only people at work in Santa Cruz were some men engaged 
in building an adobe wall around the priest's garden. 

At last we reached the Rio Grande, yellow and swift; crossed 
it on a low wooden bridge, and so came to Espanola, the southern 
terminus of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. 

I doubt if there is in the confines of New Mexico a more se- 
cluded spot than Espauola, even though it has a railroad. The 
narrow-gauge appears to have kept along down the Rio Grande 



128 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

till it reached this lonely spot, and then said "There is no more. 
Here we stop." Had it gone on to Santa Fe, a real goal would 
have been reached. As it is, the southern division of the Rio 
Grande, from Antonita down, reminds one of a fishing-line with- 
out any hook. 

The banks of the Rio Grande above and below Espanola are 
occupied by Indian villages, and the Indians who lounged about 
the depot were the most cleanly and refined-looking Pueblos I 
had seen. They wore bright scarlet blankets, marked "U. S.," 
the first evidence I had noticed of any beneficence of the Govern- 
ment. On the train, which stole quietly out of Espanola, after din- 
ner, was the first comely Indian woman I had ever seen during an 
acquaintance — by sight — with Indians, beginning with the Sacs 
and Foxes when they lived in Iowa. While her features were 
purely Indian, there was that expression which, wherever we see 
it, we call womanly, and which it is difficult to further define. 
She was neatly dressed in the same masculine fashion peculiar to 
the women of the Pueblos, and was modest and quiet in her de- 
meanor, without the sullen, stupid look common to the features 
of semi-civilized people when in repose. Her appearance sug- 
gested a train of thought in conversation with an intelligent gen- 
tleman of Taos, who for the time was my fellow-traveler. He 
had seen much of Indians during his long residence in New Mex- 
ico; had served against the Navajos in the New-Mexican regi- 
ments raised by Gen. Carleton, and had original views respecting 
Indians, as indeed he seemed to have on all subjects. 

Taking the Pueblo woman as a text, he said that the position 
of women among Indians is not generally understood. The In- 
dian woman among the wild people is in appearance a slave, per- 
forming all sorts of drudgery. In reality she has a better brain 
than the male Indian, who is a weak animal. The squaws 
must bear the brunt of the campaigns, and Indians rarely go to 
war against their counsel. It is the women who invent and fre- 
quently execute the hellish cruelties inflicted upon captives, in 
revenge for the killing of some relative of an influential squaw. 
Neither are Indians incapable of the " tender passion," Indian 
songs, like the songs of civilized people, are not only of war, 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 129 

but of love. The Apache "buck" constructs himself a sort of 
flute out of a gun-barrel, and by a series of diabolical noises 
on this instrument he strives to express the sentiments which agi- 
tate his copper-colored bosom. Could some agency, my inform- 
ant thought, be brought to bear upon the Indian women, they 
could persuade the men to live in peace. But under the Indian 
rule wives are a matter of purchase, and most horse-stealing and 
plundering raids are undertaken by young men to supply them- 
selves with the wherewithal to set up house-keeping. Thus it is 
seen that love not only rules "the camp, the court, the field, the 
grove," but also the desert and the lava-bed, the canon and the 
mesquite thicket. 

My Taos philosopher left the train at Embudo. The car seemed 
«mpty without him ; in fact there was but a handful of passengers. 
When the narrow-gauge is extended to Santa Fe — a work now 
in progress — a circuit will be established and a route will be 
open for tourists. A run over the A. T. & S. F. from Atchison 
to Santa Fe, and then back to the northward over the Rio Grande, 
will be full of variety and interest. But to return to the present 
journey. 

The Rio Grande began to look like a brawling mountain creek, 
and finally was lost to sight, and we commenced the ascent of the 
Comanche Pass. It is up, up, I do not know how many miles, 
clinging and climbing along the side of the mountain. A goat- 
path could hardly be steeper or more devious. We wound in 
and out, crossing deep ravines on high bridges, passing through 
cuts so narrow that you could touch the sides with your hands; 
then holding on by the mountain's side along a straight shelf for 
some distance, affording a chance to look back upon the long in- 
cline we had ascended. All around were mountains. From one 
side of the cars we looked up the straight mountain-side; from the 
other down into the perpendicular depths; before was still the 
steep path. At every turn it seemed as if we would reach the 
place where the mesa met the sky, but there were other windings, 
and it was up and upward still. At last we grew tired — ceased 
to be expectant; the road might climb to the stars for all we 
knew or cared. But at last the hoarse breathing of the engine 



130 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

ceased. We were on the high, level raountain-lop, and looking 
to the eastward we saw a great plain. Beyond rose a heavy 
range of snow-capped mountains. It was the plain of Taos, and 
the few reddish dots near the mountain's foot were the town of 
Taos. Then we lost sight of it, and were in the pine woods of a 
country that reminded me somewhat of the "glades" of the Al- 
leghanies. There is not a town on the line between Espanola and 
Antonita, only the railroad houses, the section houses being of 
hewed pine logs, painted red, reminding one somewhat of Norway. 

At Barranca we had supper, an excellent meal. It is wonder- 
ful how well travelers are fed in the most out-of-the-way places. 
The railroad is, to use an expression not altogether unknown to 
reporters, " the prince of caterers." 

Night found us on the high plains, with mountains in a con- 
tinuous chain on our right. At Antonita there was a street — 
the first we had seen since leaving Santa Fe. It was like coming 
out of a wilderness. At Antonita the road turns off to Durango 
and the San Juan country, and the Toltec gorge, and the cliff 
houses, and a world of wonders, but we had ceased looking for 
these. 

A change of cars, and we sped along under the moon. The 
conductor was obliging and instructive, and pointed out every- 
thing. Those peaks were the Costillas, and up the stream a few 
miles once stood old Fort Massachusetts, and here was the later 
Fort Garland. This high mountain, its top showing broad sheets 
of snow that glittered in the light of the white moon, was the 
Sierra Blanca, and this and that peak had never been climbed ; 
and then I wondered why we did not have an "Alpine Club" like 
the English, to do that sort of thing, and get their necks broken 
for the benefit of the newspapers. 

At two o'clock in the morning we reached Placer, where I had 
determined to stop over and cross the mountain and see the Veta 
Pass by daylight. 

The morning broke clear, and it still seemed like New Mexico, 
but by the time we had reached the summit the sky was overcast. 
It seemed as if that mountain was the dividing line between two 
climates. There were occasional bursts of sunshine as we 



HOMEWAED BOUND. 131 

climbed down the pass, but masses of fog hung on the slopes 
of the mountains like smoke from a battle-field. The pass was 
not as rugged as I had first expected, the slopes being actually- 
like New England pastures. The engineering is wonderful, but 
the originality of the thing was detracted from by noting the old 
wagon-road to Fort Garland winding along-side. We have 
reached the point that we naturally expect the locomotive to go 
wherever a mule can climb. The " mule-shoe curve " is a striking 
piece of work. At the time of its construction there was noth- 
ing like it in the country. I do not know that it has ever been 
surpassed. So down and down we went, without jar or slip, or 
more untoward motion than would occur on level ground, and 
here we were at La Veta; henceforth we were to cross no more 
mountains. 

This road on from La Veta to Pueblo takes the mountains in 
reverse that I had seen going southwest, and I had hoped to see 
the Spanish peaks again, but a dull bank of clouds settled half- 
way down the mountain-slope and hid all from view; there was 
nothing except the green plains and streams running bank-full 
from recent rains; all was cool and green and damp. One might 
as well have been in Liverpool. 

The next day was passed in Pueblo; full of new brick blocks 
and bustle and Kansas fellows, and not only white Kansans but 
black ones. In every town in my travels I was accosted by some 
colored brother whom I had known in Kansas; and they were 
among the most active and wide-awake of the population. 

The "Old Mortality" of Pueblo is our old friend "Bona"^ 
Hansel, who erstwhile made the sparks fly " like chaff from a 
threshing-floor," in the blacksmith shop at Seneca, but who for 
many years has beaten the newspaper drum in Kansas and Col- 
orado. "Bona" and Mrs. Bona, who, by the way, has studied 
hard under a good master and has become an artist of celebrity, 
are living in Pueblo, having built half a dozen towns, and risen 
and fallen with as many mining booms in Colorado. Although 
it rained miserably all day, mine ancient philosopher and friend 
went the rounds and explained how Pueblo had everything and 
more, too, and was bound to be the great city of the mountains. 



132 SOUTHWESTERN LETTERS. 

before which Denver would "pale her ineffectual fires," The 
most impressive sight in Pueblo is the steel works. Iron ore, 
coal and limestone are collected at Pueblo, and the result is first 
iron, then steel, then steel rails. If you have never seen steel 
made you should see the process at Pueblo or elsewhere. The 
molten iron is subjected to a blast in an immense holder, hung on 
bearings. If I supposed the readers of the Champion would 
understand me, I would say it was shaped like a keno urn — but 
to make the matter clear we will call it the nest of the oriole. 
From the mouth, under the strong blast, flash and fly such 
fireworks as never human pyrotechnist made. It is as if every 
wheat-head and straw from a threshing-machine was turned sep- 
erately into golden fire, yet burning so as to preserve their in- 
dividual form. When this fiery broth is cooked, the great 
converter is tipped easily on its side, the purified metal flows into 
great caldrons which run around a circular railway, and the metal 
is drawn oflT into moulds, whence come the blocks of steel known 
as "blooms," which are rolled into rails. There are twelve hun- 
dred swarthy men employed in these works, and their capacity is 
being doubled. 

In the wet evening as the sun was sinking, the famous " Santa 
Fe" fast train, the "Cannon Ball," drew up at the Pueblo depot, 
a crowd having gathered to see the start. In a moment we were 
oflT, to make the journey from the mountains to the Missouri in 
less than twenty-four hours. Half of Colorado and the length 
of Kansas to be traversed between sunsets. At the great speed 
-one would expect some jar, but so smooth is the track that none 
is perceptible, and you can only realize how fast you are going 
by seeing the telegraph poles whisk past. All night while we 
slept, the train was tearing across the plains; first one conductor 
and then another walked his rounds; the engineer and fireman 
.gave place to others, and still we rushed on; over high embank- 
ments and through cuts and across bridges, and, always in peril, 
yet always safe because of watchful eyes and skillful hands and 
hearts of oak and nerves of iron. So the train kept on its swift 
and tireless way, and not a sleeping child or timid woman woke. 
The sun set, the stars rose from and sank into the plain, and the 



HOMEWARD BOUND. 133 

day came again. With its coming I woke and looked out on a 
greeu prairie that stretched to the brightening sky. I did not 
know what stations we had passed, nor just where we were, but 
I saw a white school house facing the rising sun, and I knew it 
was Kansas. 

It was hundreds of miles yet to Atchison, but what of it? — it 
was Kansas all the way. Villages and towns grew more fre- 
quent ; wheat, oceans of it, showed dappled in the sun. The 
cars took on passengers at every stop ; names and faces grew fa- 
miliar; here was Larned, Hutchinson, Newton, and all. Three 
hundred miles of it, and all good. No more volcanic mountains, 
wrecked and splintered by fire; no more deserts, no more dark 
people speaking an unfamiliar tongue; no more cactus; no 
more yucca, with its fierce and bayonet-like leaves; no more 
goats, with their ragged and swarthy herdsman; no more sun- 
baked adobes ; no more mournful old churches, with their harsh 
and jangling bells; but the newest country and the best — our 
own Kansas. And so, after three thousand miles of it, this 
wandering north and south, and east and west, seeing much that 
was interesting and strange, and new and instructive to the 
writer — and it is to be hoped not wholly without interest to the 
reader — there is nothing like that place of which some old dead- 
and-gone schoolman has written in a forgotten book : 

"It is not doubted that men have a home, in that place where 
each one has established his hearth and the sum of his posses- 
sions and fortunes; whence he will not depart if nothing calls 
him away ; whence, if he has departed, he seems to be a wan- 
derer, and if he returns he ceases to wander." 



CAUTION. 



The undersigned wishes to caution all who may be tempted to purchase 
and peruse a copy of this l^ook against doing so — for the following reasons: 

1. You may be amused. 

2. You may be interested. . 

3. You may be instructed. 

4. You may be moved to move to Mexico — New or Old. 

5. You may be discouraged from staying at home all your life. 

6. You may find out where to go to get richer than anybody else. 

7. You may be induced to take a ride over the Atchison, Topeka & Santa 
Fc Railroad, which eijuals a journey one-eigh'h of the distance around the 
world. 

Any one of these catastrophes would l>e very bad, and so the advice is 
given not to buy this book. W. F. WHITE, 

Gen. Passenger and Ticket Agent, lopeka, Kas. 



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